How Effective is e-NAM in Integrating Food Commodity Prices in India? Evidence from the Onion Market

• Start date अप्रैल, 2020
• Completion date मार्च, 2021
• Sponsor NIPFP
• Project leader Rudrani Bhattacharya
• Consultants/Other authors Sabarni Chowdhury
• Focus

  A series of market distortionary rules and regulations hinder the development of an integrated agricultural market in India. In order to ensure greater transparency and uniformity of food commodity prices across states, various reform measures have to be undertaken to develop agriculture marketing. The Central government established e-NAM in 2016 as a first step toward inducing competition in the agricultural markets. e-NAM is a pan-India electronic trading portal which integrates the existing Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.  This paper examines whether the introduction of e-NAM has improved the spatial integration of onion markets in India. Using cointegration analysis, the study investigates onion market price integration of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan and West Bengal with the average wholesale onion price of India for the period 2010-2016 (before e-NAM ) and 2016-2019 (after e-NAM ). It provides evidence in favour of market integration for the period 2016-2019, while multiple relations are found to govern onion prices across states during 2010-2016. The evidence, in effect, suggests that the introduction of e-NAM in 2016 has improved market integration for onion in India.