Reading - Part 1
Exercise 9: Onions
Read the text. Fill in each gap with ONE word.
(The word must come from somewhere else in the text.)
Onions
Onions are very important in Bangladesh cooking. However, it is more difficult to buy them. There is
a shortage. This means prices have gone up a lot. The price of one kilogram has risen from US36 cents
to around $3.25. This is nearly a ten-fold increase. Many Bangladeshis now cannot afford to
(1)
onions.
(2)
usually imports them from its neighbour India. Recent monsoon rain in India damaged a lot of India's
onion harvest. This made India ban exports to Bangladesh. Bangladesh's opposition party has called
for nationwide protests because of the record
(3).
The onion crisis is very serious. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed has stopped using it in her
(4).
She is using onion alternatives in her dishes. Some onions are on sale in Dhaka markets at twice
their usual price. Hundreds of people queued for hours to buy one kilo. One person said he would
stand for two
(5)
more to save some money. He has never seen onion prices so high. A Dhaka resident said
(6)
in her neighbourhood have stopped eating onions. She last bought a kilo of onions 15 days ago.
Many street-food sellers can no longer make their onion-based snacks.