Pepper price goes down in terminal market

The price of pepper has gone down in the terminal market within a short span of a week. The price drop is by around Rs.8 which has brought the pepper farmers into a crisis.

The price fall is analysed to be due to the rise in imports and availability of stocked pepper in warehouses. The price of pepper was around Rs.480 per 1kg for ungarbled varieties and around Rs.500 for garbled types in the terminal market in Cochin, Kerala.

The farmers and dealers of pepper attribute the price fall to the inability of the systems to control unauthorized imports into the market. Recently an excess amount of pepper import from Sri Lanka had been reported which was capable of making the situation even worse.