Visakhapatnam: After potatoes, onions, tomatoes and few other vegetables, now eggs are burning a hole in the pockets of Vizagites.
Egg is considered the most basic of non-vegetarian items when vegetables become dearer. But, buying a dozen eggs has become a costly affair. Though demand for the eggs is said to be stable, the retail shop owners increased the price of eggs citing various untenable reasons.
Sources in the poultry business said that the supply is unaffected for the past few months. There are over 70 poultry farms in Vizag region, covering Srika-kulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts, which produce over 40 lakh eggs per day and around 30 lakh eggs are consumed every day.
According to the National Egg Coordi-nation Committee the poultry farmers are being offered '3.23 per egg, however an egg in the wholesale market is being sold at '3.50 while in the retail market the cost of one egg is '4.50 to '5 depending on the area of the city.
A consumer K. Siva Kumar of MVP Colony area in the city said “I have been consuming eggs during breakfast for the past few years and I never purchased an egg for '5. But, the price of egg is touched '5 in our area.”
When contacted NECC, Vizag Zone chairman G. Ramak-rishna Choudhary said that some of the retail businessmen are selling the egg at '5 citing various reasons such as damage to the eggs during transportation, it being a highly perishable item and few other untenable reasons. The-re is no mechanism to control the price of eggs in the retail market so the traders are looting the consumers, he added.
