Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)

Mangaluru, Nov 19: Due to untimely rain in the region for long, agriculture has suffered heavily. As a result, tomato price has for the first time in the district breached the Rs 100 mark per kilogram.

The city gets tomatoes from Hassan, Bengaluru and other districts. There is no shortage of inflow but the price has been going up every day for the last nearly a week. On Thursday, tomato was sold at Rs 86 per kg in the wholesale market while retailers sold it or Rs 90 to 95 per kg. In other markets, tomato was priced at Rs 100 a kg.

Even though the vegetable had touched Rs 70 a kg level during Diwali festival last year, it has touched Rs 100 for the first time after a decade, recall the merchants, who expect prices to further go up to Rs 120 per kg.

It is learnt that the tomato growers are not getting the benefit of this price rise. Tomato grown in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is being exported to Telangana, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat etc. Many places where vegetables are grown aplenty are getting heavy rainfall which has destroyed the crops, the price of vegetables is rising, analysts say.

In general, prices of other vegetables too have gone up by about 50 percent because of floods in the state and Tamil Nadu resulting in scarcity of vegetables in the market. Because of the increasing diesel and petrol prices, prices of cooking oil and food grains have already gone up steeply.