The country's onion exports are likely to fall by almost a third to about eight lakh tons in 2007-08 fiscal due to curbs on overseas sales during the festival season and congestion at ports.

"We have exported about six lakh tons till December and the final export figure for the entire fiscal is likely to be around eight lakh tons," a senior government official said.

This would be a decline of 31% from exports of 11.61 lakh tons in the previous year. The official said despite a substantial cut in minimum export price (MEP), exports over the next three months would not be more than two lakh tons due to congestion at ports.

Onion exports declined by 36% to 5.97 lakh tons during April-December period of current fiscal as compared to 9.26 lakh tons in the year-ago period.

India produces about 65 lakh tons of onion annually. The move to raise the MEP during the festival season (due to high domestic prices) was the main factor for the decline in exports, traders said, adding November-December is very good period to sell onions in overseas markets.

After the festival season, Nafed and 12 other agencies, which fix the export price every month, had drastically cut the MEP for most of the destinations to boost overseas sales. The onion MEP for January shipments stands at 200 dollars a tonne for most of the destinations such as Gulf countries. The MEP was 495 dollars a tonne in October last year. As a result of higher MEP, the exports in October and November were 23,785 tons and 30,714 tons respectively. The exports in the same period of the previous year were 88,389 tons and 1.08 lakh tons respectively.