NEW DELHI, Sept 25: Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister K V Thomas today said the government is examining the reasons for ‘undue’ rise in prices of foodgrains despite high production.
“It is monitoring the prices of all essential commodities including foodgrains. To check the prices of foodgrains, norms for selling wheat to bulk traders like flour mills under the open market sale scheme (OMSS) have been eased,” Prof Thomas said while addressing the 73rd annual general meeting of Roller Flour Millers’ Federation of India here.
He said, “Ensuring food security to the people has always been an area of focus for the government. Food security has two main aspects — availability of sufficient foodgrains to meet the domestic demand; and access, at the individual or the household level, to adequate quantities of food at affordable prices.
“Due to technological breakthroughs during Green Revolution in the ’60s, our country attained self-sufficiency in foodgrains production. Today not only are our farmers producing sufficient food grains to meet the domestic requirement, but we are also exporting foodgrains.”
The country has witnessed record production of foodgrains in recent years, he said, adding total foodgrains production has increased from 218 million tonnes in 2009-10 to 244 million tonnes in 2010-11 and is estimated to have further increased to a record level of about 259 million tonnes in 2011-12.
Prof Thomas said: “The combined procurement of wheat and rice during this period has also increased from 54.55 million tonnes in 2009-10 to 62.53 million tonnes in 2010-11 and further to 73.18 million tonnes in 2011-12. In percentage terms, combined procurement of wheat and rice has been about one third of their production in recent years. As a result, our granaries are full and we are in a comfortable position in terms of food grains stock in the central pool.”
He said to moderate the open market prices of wheat, Government is also releasing wheat in open market through OMSS scheme.
“During 2012-13, more than 60 lakh tonnes of wheat was sold under the scheme through tenders floated by the Food Corporation of India. During 2013-14 also, the Government has allocated 100 lakh tonnes of wheat and 5 lakh tonnes of rice under different sub schemes under OMSS.
“It was initially decided that out of the 100 lakh tonnes wheat allocation, 85 lakh tonnes will be sold from godowns in Punjab and Haryana at the reserve price of Rs. 1500 per quintal,” he said.
He voiced confidence that “the market prices are not likely to increase much due to our presence in the market with a substantial quantity of wheat on offer at moderate reserve prices”.
(UNI)
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