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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | India's overflowing grain bins may lead to crisis, warns key farm panel by Rishi Shah

India's overflowing grain bins may lead to crisis, warns key farm panel by Rishi Shah

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published Published on Mar 24, 2011   modified Modified on Mar 24, 2011
A key government panel has warned that the country's overflowing grain bins will lead to a crisis if the government did not come up with a plan to dispose of the stored grain .

The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) painted the grim picture in a presentation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week.

It said the Centre, which is the biggest buyer of grain in the country, was sitting over huge grain inventories and that the problem will compound further when the wheat procurement begins in a few days. India's wheat production is expected to touch a record 81.47 million tonnes (mt) this year.

"There's going to be huge storage crisis unless we make grain availability data transparent, release the excess in the market and open it to timely exports," an agriculture ministry official said, adding "At present, we have locked up in our stores the potential of extra foodgrain worth 40,000 crore."

The disclosure is indicative of an increasing concern in the government on the subject and comes barely a year after the country faced an acute grain supply strain, which resulted in double-digit inflation and spiraling food prices.

"The agriculture situation is a very dynamic one and there is urgent need to come up with a policy that will deal with the fast changing exigencies of over stocking one season and under supply the next," the official said.

Efficient foodgrain management has been a subject of intense concern since last year's food price spiral, primarily in the open market, although the government had record level of grain in its stored.

The CACP computed the cost to the government on the storage of additional grain based on current economic cost of around 20 per kg for rice and 16 for a kg of wheat.

The CACP's presentation was part of an exercise to link all commodity markets in the country electronically and make grain availability and stocks transparent.

Representatives of one of the top commodity exchanges, the NCDEX, are likely to make a detailed presentation on a time-bound completion of this to senior farm ministry officials later in the week.

According to government estimates, foodgrain harvest in 2010-11 would be to the tune of 232mt, second highest of all time.

The government has set a procurement target of 26.3mt, but storage is woefully inadequate and incentive schemes for the private sector slow and unattractive.

The government had sanctioned 150 lakh tonne of additional storage facility, but less than 1% of it has been constructed so far.

Last year, archaic distribution rules forced release of only a small amount of grain despite high inflation. This led to wastage of about 50,000 tonnes of wheat.

The Economic Times, 24 March, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/commodities/indias-overflowing-grain-bins-may-lead-to-crisis-warns-key-farm-panel/articleshow/7777770.cms


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