New Delhi, Apr 11 (IANS): The Consumer Affairs Ministry on Tuesday uploaded a software on its website for collecting prices of these 22 essential food commodities through crowd sourcing and stakeholder participation, an official statement said.

As per the statement, citizens, retail and wholesale businesses, voluntary consumer organisations and all other stakeholders can register on this portal and enter prices of their locality.

"Users will have to register only once on the portal to get user id and password instantly and enter prices of their locality," it said.

The Price Monitoring Cell (PMC) of the ministry monitors the retail and wholesale prices of 22 essential food commodities on a daily basis, analyses the price situation and gives advance feedback for taking appropriate policy measures to prevent undesired shortfall in the availability of essential commodities.

These 22 commodities include five items groups - - food grains (rice, wheat, atta), pulses (gram, tur, urad, moong, masur ), edible oils (groundnut oil, mustard oil, vanaspati, soya oil, sunflower oil, palm oil), vegetables (potato, onion, tomato) and other items like sugar, gur (jaggery), milk, tea, and salt.