Prices of sugar, rice and other essential commodities surge ahead of festive season

As India gets into the festive mode of Dasara and Deepavali, there is a double-digit price surge in some of the key ingredients that form part of the sweets and snacks cooked up by homemakers and sweet shop owners. Year-on-year data from the Department Of Consumer Affairs, that tracks the retail price information nationally, shows that prices of essential commodities like sugar, rice, sunflower oil, jaggery, chillies and soybean oil have gone up in a big way.

The price rise is across the board. Onion prices are up by 97.8%, sugar by 23.4%, sunflower oil by 16.9%, jaggery by 15.7%, tur dal by 13.5%, chillies (whole) by 11.5% and rice by 10.1%. 

The price of onion has nearly doubled from ₹26.64 per kg on October 15, 2025 to ₹52.68 on October 15, 2026. 

Sugar prices

Sugar prices, which rose to new highs in August 2026, are again on the rise. In August this year, the price of sugar touched ₹65 before an intervention by the government brought it down. Now, the price has surged by 23.4% from last year October’s price. Sugar prices have now reached ₹57.42. 

“The reason is simple: crops have failed. There was no rain when it should have rained. The whole belt where pulses and grains are grown on the Bombay-Hyderabad route has been affected. Other parts of the country were equally affected,” says Ashish Agarwal, a wholesale trader In Hyderabad’s Maharajgunj which is a wholesale market that caters to the surrounding districts of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

“On October 16, 2025, tur dal was ₹94, and it is ₹136 on October 16, 2026. Chana dal was ₹73, it is now ₹90; urad was ₹97 it is now ₹125; moong dal was ₹95, this year it is ₹106,” informs Mr. Agarwal after looking up prices of the same commodities on the same day in 2025. “We are an agricultural economy. If there is no rain it will have its impact,” he says.

Adding fuel to the price surge is the price of liquified petroleum gas which has gone up by 67.7% in Chennai. Data from Indian Oil shows that the price of a 19 kg commercial gas cylinder has gone up from ₹1,738 on September 1, 2025 to ₹2916 on September 1, 2026. Price of the smaller 14.2 domestic cylinder however has gone up by 9.8%. In October 2025, the cylinder price in Hyderabad was ₹905 and this has increased to ₹994 in October 2026.