New Delhi. Amidst the excitement of Lok Sabha elections, the Central Government has announced a plan to significantly increase wheat procurement in non-traditional states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar. The special thing is that in the current marketing year 2024-25, a target has been set to increase wheat procurement seven times to 50 lakh tonnes. These three states have contributed only 6.7 lakh tonnes to the central pool during the 2023-24 marketing year (April-March). At the same time, the Union Food Ministry has set a target of purchasing 16 percent of the total wheat procurement target of 310 lakh tonnes for 2024-25.
Wheat procurement at Minimum Support Price (MSP) is usually done by the Centre’s nodal agency Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state agencies. However, cooperative societies NAFED and NCCF have also been included this year with a procurement target of five lakh tonnes each. The minimum support price (MSP) of wheat for the current year has been fixed at Rs 2,275 per quintal.
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Contribution of 3 states is less than the capacity.
Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra told reporters, “Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan are contributing much less than their potential.” We are targeting to purchase a total of 310 lakh tonnes of wheat this year. Of which we are expecting to purchase at least 50 lakh tonnes from the three non-traditional purchasing states alone. Since October, the Center has been working with these three states to increase the procurement level. He said that several steps have been taken to overcome the shortcomings and this will help in boosting the procurement level in the three states.
Supply will get help in food scheme
The Secretary said that the 2024 general elections are not likely to affect wheat procurement operations. He said the increase in wheat procurement from non-traditional states will help in restoring the allocation of wheat under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana and other welfare schemes. Most importantly, the Secretary said that the government has taken steps to ensure transfer of MSP to farmers’ bank accounts within 48 hours, streamlining the incidental burden of procurement for farmers, banking related issues like Aadhaar integration with bank accounts. It has been decided to streamline it.
He said the government has also opened more procurement centers targeting production hotspots, set up mobile procurement centres, decided to leverage self-help groups, panchayats, farmer producer organisations. He said that apart from this, the government has ensured institutional preparedness through working capital to the agencies to ensure payment of MSP to the farmers within 48 hours. The Secretary informed that a Central Control Room has been set up at the FCI Headquarters in Delhi for real-time monitoring of procurement and coordination between various agencies.
On the prices of wheat and rice, the Secretary said that after the start of retail sale of ‘Bharat’ brand wheat flour, the prices of flour and wheat are currently stable. So far, about 7.06 lakh tonnes of wheat flour has been sold. Even the retail inflation rate of rice has remained stable at 13 percent and 14 percent for the last two months. He said that since February till now, about 3.1 lakh tonnes of FCI rice has been sold under the Bharat brand.
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Tags: Modi government, scheme, wheat crop, Wheat Procurement
FIRST PUBLISHED: April 5, 2024, 02:03 IST