Chennai:
In a bid to ease the storage
problem in Food corporation of India godowns, the Union Government has urged
the states to build intermediate godowns to stock food grains for at least six
months.
Addressing a press
conference on the sidelines of national conference on ‘Food Security - Role of
Standards,’ organised by the Bureau of Indian Standards, Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and
Public Distribution K V Thomas said that the Union government has urged the
states to
off-take at least six months of food grains needed for PDS and store it in the
godowns since the storage capacity of Food Corporation of India is 64 million
tonnes and the present stock is about 82-83 million metric tonnes.
Currently, the states lift
foodgrains from FCI and send it directly to PDS shops.
The minister also said the government is expecting a bumper
production of food grains this year. “Wheat production is expected to be 902.30
lakh tonnes, of which 370 lakh tonne will be procured. Similarly, rice
production is expected to be 1,034.1 lakh tonnes and procurement will be 353.15
lakh tonnes. The latest estimate of central storage food grains is to the tune
of 82 million tonnes, which is three times higher than the buffer amounts,” the
minister added.
He said this year states
like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Rajasthan were also
expected to produce more and there was storage problem in these states also.
However, he said despite the shortage of
storage, the loss and storage damage was low when compared with five years ago
which was 2.5 per cent. Now it has come down to 0.006 per cent. 
No comments:
Post a Comment