After a meeting with the state agri-marketing minister, the potato traders have declared to call off their strike from Wednesday evening.
This may result in a reduction in retail prices from Thursday after the supply is restored, the agri-marketing officials said.
The senior executives of the Progressive Potato Traders, the body of leading potato marketing agencies in Bengal, had a meeting with Becharam Manna, the agri-marketing minister and this evening they held a follow-up meeting in Burdwan town. State president of the organisation, Jagabandhu Mondal and state secretary Laltu Mukherjee, after the meeting in Burdwan, said, “We’ve decided to keep faith on the assurances given to the traders by the minister yesterday and for that, we’ve called off our strike this evening.”
The Bengal government recently had imposed a ban on potato export to other states, which had irked the potato merchants and in protest against the whip, the traders had declared strike till Wednesday. Mondal said, “As the minister has assured us to consider our appeal in yesterday’s meeting, our body has taken the resolution to end our strike and the supply of potato will be regularized across the state from Thursday morning.”
The potato growers had stocked 12.55 crore potato packets in the cold storages last year, of which 6 lakh MT are still stacked in the storages. Mondal said, “Most of the traders in Midnapore and Bankura export their potato to other states and East Burdwan, the second leading district seeds just 20 per cent of the reserved packets to other states.” As the traders had gone on strike, potato prices started soaring up at the retail markets from today even in the high yielding districts.