Consumers feel relief as wheat product prices soften during festival month

Going forward, market players feel that prices would be guided somewhat by the pace of new crop sowing and also the trajectory of liquidation of wheat inventories by government agencies

Prices of wheat and wheat products like atta, maida, and sooji have softened since November. This should come as some relief to consumers during the peak festival season. However, the drop hasn't been uniform across all markets. In some markets of Madhya Pradesh, there has been a slight uptick in product prices, data sourced from private traders showed. 
 

Market players feel that prices would be guided somewhat by the pace of new crop sowing and also the trajectory of liquidation of wheat inventories by government agencies. 

On the sowing front, till last time when data was available (week ended November 16), sowing of wheat did pick up pace as compared to the week before as festivities ebbed in various parts of North India, even though acreage was still lower than the corresponding period of last year. 

The data showed that till November 17, wheat had been sown in around 8.60 million hectares of land till Friday, which was 5.49 per cent lower than the same period last year. Till a week before that, the year-on-year acreage deficit was over 11 per cent.