Food secretary Sanjeev Chopra on Thursday said on Thursday: “While the inflation in wheat has been largely curbed, price rise in rice has plateaued.” However, since edible oil prices have declined, there is currently no proposal to reduce its import duties, he said.
The government has decided to expand the whet procurement drive to more regions, to bolster the stocks that are hovering around the buffer level. However, it won’t lift the export restrictions on rice anytime soon or allow shipments of sugar this season, as it remains focussed on containing food inflation.
Food secretary Sanjeev Chopra on Thursday said on Thursday: “While the inflation in wheat has been largely curbed, price rise in rice has plateaued.” However, since edible oil prices have declined, there is currently no proposal to reduce its import duties, he said.
Chopra said the government has decided to allocate 0.3 MT of grain for the current fiscal under Bharat rice and atta initiative against an allocation of 0.15 MT last fiscal. Under the Bharat rice and atta initiative the agencies such as Nafed and NCCF are selling atta and rice at Rs 27.50/kg and Rs 29/kg respectively in the retail market,
To expand the wheat procurement region, the government is aiming to purchase 5 million tonne (MT) of wheat from the farmers under the Minimum Support Price (MSP) operations in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar in the current rabi marketing season (2024-25), he said.
“We have increase procurement centers as well as registration points for the farmers besides ensuring payment for purchase to the farmers in 48 hours to boost purchase in these non-traditional regions,” Chopra said at a briefing.
The food ministry has identified 59 key districts in these three states for boosting MSP purchase operations. In the 2023-24 marketing season (April-June), the government agencies had purchased only around 0.6 MT of wheat in these three key producing states. The farmers registered for wheat procurement drive in these three states have crossed 0.36 million against only 0.2 million last season. The registration window will continue to end of the season.
To bolster stock, which had plummeted to a 16-year low, the government’s wheat procurement drive for the current marketing season (April-June) commenced officially earlier this week. This season, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in collaboration with state agencies had commenced purchase operations in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan last month.
So far, 0.6 MT of wheat has been purchased by agencies mostly in Madhya Pradesh. However procurement from farmers have commenced in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
The government has set a target of 31 MT of wheat purchase during the season by government agencies, which is expected to boost stocks as well as allow the FCI to carry out open market sale of the grain to bulk buyers.
Chopra said after purchasing the 31 MT of wheat, the government would rconsider allocating more wheat under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) to around 24 MT annually from current level of 18 MT.
Wheat stocks with the FCI declined to 7.57 MT, against a buffer of 7.46 MT for April 1 due to low procurement for the last two years and aggressive sale of grains in the open market by the corporation in FY24. The last time wheat stocks were below the current levels was way back in 2008. It had then dropped to 5.8 MT in April in that year.
Madhya Pradesh, the second biggest contributor to the central pool wheat stock after Punjab, is aiming to procure 8.2 MT of grain in the 2024-25 rabi marketing season. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have declared a bonus of Rs 125/quintal over the MSP of Rs 2275/quintal for the season.
Punjab and Haryana, two key contributors to the central pool stock, have set a wheat purchase target of 13 MT and 5 MT respectively for the marketing season.
After achieving a record procurement 43.3 MT in 2021-22 season, the purchase by the government agencies under the MSP operations fell to record low of 18.8 MT in 2022-23 season. However, it rose by around 40% to 26.2 MT in 2023-24 in the rabi marketing season.
Retail inflation in wheat declined further to only 2% in February from 12% in July,2023 on year because of improvement in supplies due to a record offloading of 9.6 MT of wheat by FCI in the current fiscal.
The government has set a higher wheat production target of a record 114 MT for the 2023-24 crop year (July-June) against an estimated output of 110.5 MT in 2022-23.
Source:financialexpress.com