He told reporters here that the buffer stocks of wheat had reached 21.6million tonnes, 8.8 million tonnes more than the required quantity, andimport of wheat was continuing. The same was true of sugar and edible oilsand a rational policy to reduce the imports of these commodities wasurgently needed to release the piled-up stocks by selling these in the openmarket.

He said the duty structure for import of wheat and other commodities had tobe modified to discourage imports, which could not be banned under WTO,keeping in view its impact on the market prices.

He said the imported wheat was cheaper than locally produced wheat and therewas danger of price escalation in the domestic market if any irrationaldecision was taken to prohibit imports.

He said the situation in the case of edible oils was more complicated andthe government was seriously considering various options to import refinededible oil, crude oil, oilseeds or broken oilseeds to streamline the importsand further distribution within the country.

Expressing serious concern over diversion of foodgrains and othercommodities meant for PDS to the open market, Kumar said that anauthoritative survey conducted by the department revealed that 36 per centof foodgrains and 31 per cent of sugar supplied under PDS were being sold inthe open market.

This implied that subsidy worth Rs 4,000 crore on foodgrains was notreaching the poor people for which it was meant, he added.

Replying to a question he said that there was no move to discontinuedistribution of sugar under PDS but a serious exercise would be undertakento detect bogus ration cards, which even exceeded the total population atsome places. He said a proposal for social audit of public distribution byinvolving the elected panchayat representatives was under consideration ofthe government.

This would help in streamlining the supplies and ensure that they werelifted regularly on monthly basis and the poor people were not required topurchase the commodities from the open market, he added.

Stressing the need for restoring the credibility of products, Kumar saidthat standardisation of quality was a must for this and he would take allpossible measures to strengthen the Bureau of Indian Standards and ISI toexercise strict quality control.

The consumer protection and essential commodities acts were being amended tomake these more effective and comprehensive and relevant amendments would bebrought during the winter session of the parliament, he disclosed.

Kumar said that his ministry was also considering evolving a mechanism forprice fixation, taking an overall view of the prevalent cost and pricestructure. He said a long-term plan was being drawn up to increase thestorage capacity and preference would be given to Himachal Pradesh in theconstruction of cold storages for its main crops apple and potato. He saidthe present storage capacity of Himachal was one-third of the requirement,and efforts would be made to ensure that it had a capacity to storecommodities for a period of three months.

He said the number of distribution centres of FCI was also being raised from14 to 22 in the state and the matter had been taken up at the centre forincreasing the LPG agencies in tribal and remote areas. Referring to thefinancial situation in the country and in the states, Kumar said that somebitter decisions had to be taken by evolving a general consensus amongpolitical parties. The burning issues like economic reforms, povertyalleviation programmes and population control were not party programmes butnational programmes and had to treated like that by the entire country, headded.