Kathmandu, October 3:

With Nepalis’ biggest festival, Dashain just around the corner, the state-run food supplier, Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) is busy arranging for supplying essential commodities like rice and goats for citizens of Kathmandu.

NFC has fixed the rate for goats to be sold during Dashain festival and started selling them from today from NFC Bagmati Zonal office at Thapathali. The corporation is making arrangements for providing essential commodities and goats at concessional rates during Dashain and Tihar every year.

NFC has fixed the price at Rs 146 per kg of the live goats below 23 kg and Rs 150 for the goats weighing more than 23 kg. The price is same as of last year. “Since there is no significant change in the buying prices of goats, we continued with the same selling price,” said Sunder Raj Sharma, manager at NFC Bagmati office. He also informed that so far goats weighing more than 1,800 kg have already been brought in the valley. NFC plans to sell as many as 4,000 goats this year. The corporation had sold 2,600 goats last year. NFC brings in goats from Nepalgunj, Janakpur, Lahan and other parts of terai to the valley.

Though the NFC supply is not adequate as per the demand in the Kathmandu valley, people here have to depend upon private suppliers. However, prices vary with every private seller. Ratna Rai, a seller at Tukucha Khasi bazaar at Bagbazaar, says that the price of goats there ranges from Rs 140 to Rs 145 per kg for Nepali goats and Rs 150 to Rs 155 per kg for Indian goats.

“The supply deficit is very high and the price keeps fluctuating, which means prices will definitely shoot up in the coming days,” Rai reckons.