As Wheat procurement by FCI declines, govt says it is a news to cheer rather than jeer

Chennai:
Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public
Distribution Prof K V Thomas on Friday said that wheat procurement by
Food Corporation of India has declined this year.

Delivering the inaugural address during a Confederation of Indian
Industry conference on ‘Warehousing and Cold Chain Infrastructure’
here, the minister said the decline in procurement is due to farmers
getting better prices from the private traders at a higher price than
the government's minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 1,350 per quintal.

He also said there is a huge demand for India wheat abroad and farmers
are getting a price of nearly Rs 1800 per quintal of wheat.

Interestingly, the fall in wheat procurement has not perturbed the
Union government and the minister said that it is a welcome sign as
the farmers are getting better prices for their crop.

It is believed that wheat procurement has declined by 33 per cent to
25.08 million tonnes mainly due to lower arrival of wheat in the
market with aggressive buying by private traders. The Warehousing
Development and Regulatory Authority chairman Dinesh Rai said that the
Union government is not perturbed by the development as its godowns
are full.

Thomas also linked the rise in prices of essential commodities to the
lack of storage facilities in the country. The availability and
augmentation of storage capacity is one of the main priorities of the
Union government, he said.

As per estimates, an additional 35 million metric tonnes warehousing
capacity is required in the next five to 10 years, he said.

Rai said that WDRA is now registering warehouses across the country
after inspecting them. Currently, it has registered 48 state
warehousing corporations and 37 central warehousing corporations in
the state.

He also said that Nabard has got 500 applications from Primary
Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS). Eighteen of them were
forwarded for certification and WDRA has registered two of them. The
main objective of WDRA is to promote the development and regulation of
warehouses and facilitate the negotiability of warehouse receipts.
“The Negotiable Warehouse Receipts issued by warehouses registered
under this Act would help farmers get loans from the banks and avoid
distress sale of agricultural produce,” he said.

Currently, WDRA has taken several initiatives to integrate small
godowns and warehouses of (PACSs) under the negotiable warehouse
receipt system so that small and marginal farmers are befitted.