The season at the jaggery market at Anakapalle has begun on a positive note with a high average price.
Though the arrivals start trickling in from July, owing to heavy rains in August and September, hardly any significant stock has been coming to the market.
With the wet weather abating for nearly a fortnight now, the week began with arrivals of about 5,000 to 6,000 lumps a day.
The average rates for the black and the deluxe quality jaggery now are Rs. 360 and Rs. 430 respectively for 10 kg. This compares quite favourably with the Rs. 240 and Rs. 290 for the two varieties respectively at the beginning of 2015-16 season.
The 2015-16 season turned out to be quite good for the market. It received 30 lakh lumps (each of 15 kg) i.e., 45,000 tonnes of jaggery during the season.
The black quality began to be bought at Rs. 220 and moved up to Rs. 270 and the deluxe from Rs. 270 to Rs. 320 during the season. Traders stocked about 13,000 tonnes from January to April, say market sources.
When demand rose they started offloading beginning at Rs. 290 for the black variety and it shot up to Rs. 360. The best quality had begun at Rs. 330 and ended at a high of Rs. 450, according to market sources.
“What resulted in considerable improvement in the rate for the stocks enabling us to offload the inventory was the crop failure in Maharashtra,” analyses prominent trader Korukonda Butchiraju of Anakapalle.
Said to be the second largest jaggery market in the country, the Anakapalle market has a a turnover of more than Rs. 110 crore.
Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are major sugarcane producing States and failure in the latter has also resulted in spurt in sugar price, he points out.The price for a quintal of sugar that was more than Rs. 2,000 jumped to around Rs. 3,700 in 2015-16 season, he said.
