Less than two months after the government cracked down on onion exports to curb rising prices,the Commerce Ministry has approached the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to allow onion exports with minimum export price (MEP) of $600 per tonne. The Commerce Ministry has circulated a note to the EGoM to fix the onion MEP at $600 per tonne, an EGoM source told The Indian Express. The move comes within days of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar writing to Commerce Minister Anand Sharma to allow onion exports in the wake of protests from the farmers reeling under the crashing onion prices in the domestic markets. However,the Commerce Ministry is learnt to have proposed that the exporters will have to approach the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT),an arm of the same ministry,for getting licenses for their exports. This is a major change from the mechanism that was in place till the exports were banned last December. Till now,the exporters needed to obtain no-objection certificates (NOCs) from the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed),NCCF and other government trading agencies for exports. Before the ban was imposed on December 22,NAFED and other agencies had decided to raise the MEP from prevailing $525 per tonne to $1,200 a tonne for the unshipped quantities allowed for exports. Only recently,the EGoM had decided to allow export of some varieties of onions from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. This is the second time the EGoM will be discussing the issue of onion exports.
