Many Households Stop Consuming Tomatoes

HYDERABAD: Even as the prized tomato is becoming cheaper, market reports say that it is now available at about Rs 100 per kg, reports show how badly the price surge affected households.

LocalCircles, a social media platform that enables citizens and small businesses to escalate issues for action by the government, said it got 11,000 responses from household consumers located from 309 districts for its national survey. The data suggested that 17 per cent households who were buying tomatoes earlier had stopped consuming them post the surge in prices.

It also said one in three Indian households had paid over Rs 200 a kg for tomatoes last week. About 26 per cent of households surveyed paid Rs 100-150 per kg during their last purchase, 30 per cent had paid Rs 150- Rs 200, 23 per cent had purchased it at Rs 200-Rs 250 per kg and 10 per cent had shelled out over Rs 250 per kg. Only 4 per cent households surveyed said they paid Rs 70-Rs 100 per kg and another 4 per cent paid less than Rs 70 per kg.  

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its monthly bulletin in July had expressed a ‘major concern’ over the spike in tomato prices, which is an offshoot of dip in supplies due to crop damage resulting from inclement weather and pest attack in the major production belts.

Historically, tomato prices have been an important contributor to volatility in overall inflation. Its volatility also gets transmitted to prices of other vegetables in both retail and wholesale markets, said the State of the Economy article in RBI’s Bulletin released on July 17, LocalCircles said in its report.  

Tomato’s contribution to the consumer price index (CPI) basket in June 2022 was 8.9 per cent, making it the highest of the 299 commodities, it said.

Meanwhile, preparing a 'vegetarian thali' got dearer by 34 per cent in July as compared to June because of the soaring tomato prices. A non-vegetarian thali was relatively less impacted and the price of preparing one went up by only 13 per cent, according to 'Roti Rice Rate' report of Crisil, a global analytics company, for August.

The inflation in the 'thalis' is largely driven by the 233 per cent jump in tomato prices to Rs 110 per kg in July from Rs 33 in June, the report said.

Crisil said the average cost of preparing a thali at home is calculated based on input prices prevailing in north, south, east, and west India. This is the third consecutive month of inflation in the cost of thali, it said. The prices of onion and potato increased 16 per cent and 9 per cent on-month, respectively, contributing further to the increase in cost, the report said. For the non-vegetarians, the thali cost hike was tempered by a 3-5 per cent decline in the cost of broiler chicken, which comprises half of the costs, the report said.