Farm min says policy flaw makes govt biggest wheat buyer, seeks CCI probe
As the accompanying tables show, thanks to the open-ended procurement policy, FCI and other state agencies have ramped up their purchases without due consideration of the market realities. Procurement in Madhya Pradesh has more than doubled during the last three years to 8.4 million tonnes.
“We have been providing bonus to wheat farmers over the last few years and want to become the single biggest contributor of wheat to the central pool in the next few years,” chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had told FE earlier.
The record wheat procurement of close to 39 million tonnes (41% of the total output) by FCI and state government-owned agencies from this year’s production of close to 94 million tonnes has deprived the processors of any source to buy the grain other than the government. “We are forced to depend on wheat under the government's open market sale scheme because of lack of availability of wheat in the open market,” said Adi Narayan Gupta, president, Roller Flour Millers Federation of India.
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