The state has less than a month’s stock of potatoes and the new crop is not expected till the last week of December. This emerged on Thursday at meetings held by the two cold storage associations in the state.
“Around 660,000 tonnes of potatoes are left in 400-odd cold storages, half of which are required for seeds, leaving us with 3.3 lakh tonnes. This falls short of Bengal’s monthly consumption of around 4 lakh tonnes. We might face a scarcity from the last week of November till December-end,” said an official of the West Bengal Cold Chain and Cold Storage Owners Welfare Association.
The government, however, insisted that “the people of the state will not suffer”.
“We will buy potatoes from Punjab,” said agricultural marketing minister Mortaza Hossain.
