Indian onions rotting at border as exports to Bangladesh freeze

Exports of Indian onions to Bangladesh have nearly ground to a halt, leaving an estimated 30,000 tonnes piled up and rotting along several key border points. 

The disruption, which began abruptly in recent weeks, has pushed Indian traders into severe financial distress and triggered a dramatic price crash in border markets.
Bangladesh is traditionally the largest buyer of Indian onions, and until two months ago the trade was running smoothly. Hundreds of trucks carrying onions crossed daily through West Bengal’s Mahadipur border in Malda district and the Hili border in South Dinajpur. Anticipating continued strong demand, traders stored about 20,000 tonnes of onions in Mahadipur and another 10,000 tonnes in Hili.
However, with Bangladesh freezing imports, these stockpiles are now rapidly deteriorating. Traders, desperate to salvage whatever value remains, are being forced to sell onions at throwaway prices. At the Mahadipur–Sonamasjid border on Friday, onions were selling for as little as ₹2 per kilogram, with a 50-kg sack going for just ₹100. Onions sourced from Nashik at ₹16 per kg — and costing traders nearly ₹22 per kg after transport and handling — are now worth almost nothing.
In Malda’s retail markets, onion prices remain at ₹20–22 per kg, but barely seven kilometres away in Mahadipur, exporters are struggling to clear stocks at token prices. Exporters say the sudden freeze came despite verbal assurances from Bangladeshi importers, prompting them to stockpile onions at border warehouses in Ghojadanga, Petrapole, Mahadipur and Hili. The combined value of the deteriorating stocks runs into several crores.
To slow the losses, traders have hired more than a hundred workers to sort usable onions from spoiled ones — a time-consuming process that still cannot prevent large-scale wastage.
Typically, 30–35 truckloads of onions cross into Bangladesh each day from Mahadipur alone. The traders who stockpiled nearly 20,000 tonnes expected to sell at ₹30–32 per kg, which would have earned them profits of ₹8–10 per kg. Instead, they are now watching their inventories rot in storage under rising temperatures.
Traders say the crisis escalated after a notice issued on 16 November by Bangladeshi import–export authorities. The notice stated that Bangladesh’s Department of Agricultural Extension had been restricting the issuance of import permits for Indian onions — a move that has effectively frozen all trade.
Indian exporters now fear that if imports do not resume soon, the remaining stocks will be entirely unsalvageable, leading to unprecedented losses for growers, transporters and traders across the supply chain.