Punjab and Haryana, called the wheat baskets of the country as the two states contribute close to 90% of buffer stock, have, in the ongoing procurement season broken previous year?s records in wheat procurement. In Punjab as wheat procurement touched 94 lakh tonne on Tuesday, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal announced that the state may procure 100 lakh tonne as ?the yield this year was 40% more than previous year?.
In neighbouring Haryana, the procurement agencies till Tuesday had procured 46% more wheat than the total procurement of last year. About 49.68 lakh metric tonne of wheat had arrived in 362 mandis of the state so far during the current Rabi season and out of this, 49.16 lakh metric tonne have been purchased by six government procuring agencies. Besides 51,408 metric tonne wheat was also purchased by the traders which was only 1% of the total arrival. Haryana deputy chief minister Chander Mohan told FE here on Tuesday, ?The procuring agencies had surpassed the record of last three years in purchase of wheat.? While enumerating the details of the arrival of the wheat in the mandis, he said that Hafed had procured 18.34 lakh mt, food and supplies department had procured 10 lakh mt of wheat, Food Corporation of India 7.48 lakh mt Haryana Warehousing Corporation 4.53 lakh mt, Confed 4.42 lakh mt and Haryana Agro Industries Corporation 4.28 lakh mt.
The deputy chief minister said that the Sirsa district has surpassed Karnal district with the arrival of 6.87 lakh metric tonne whereas Karnal was leading with 5.91 lakh metric tonne of wheat so far in the state. Similarly, Fatehabad 5.48 lakh mt, Kaithal 5.44 lakh mt, Jind 5.33 lakh mt, Kurukshetra 4.88 lakh mt, Hisar 3.23 lakh mt, Faridabad 2.59 lakh mt, Panipat 2.17 lakh mt, Sonipat 1.97 lakh mt, Ambala 1.55 lakh mt, Yamunanagar 1.19 lakh mt and Panchkula 18,077 mt of wheat.
In Punjab, the six government agencies and private millers had procured more than 93.70 lakh tonne of wheat in Punjab till this evening. Private millers had lifted another 2,43,247.tonne. Of the total procurement, 89.04 lakh tonne had been procured for the central pool and 2,22,823 tonne for the state pool. The procurement for Central pool accounts for 95.1% while 2,11,522 tonne (2.3%) has been procured for the state pool. The millers had lifted 2,35,509 tonne (2.6%) of wheat.
Among the procurement agencies, Punjgrain had procured 16, 32,990 tonne (18.6%) whereas Markfed bought 20,73,669 tonne (23.7%). Punsup procured 20,00,372 tonne (22.8%), PSWC collected 11,08,661 tonne (12.6%) whereas Paic was able to procure 10,04,286 tonne (11.5%) of wheat for the central pool. The Central government agency, FCI, had been able to procure 9,45,693 tonne (10.8%) for the central pool. Ferozepur district with 10,49,084 tonne of procurement was leading in procurement operations whereas Sangrur district with 9,19,793 tonne of procurement was at second slot and Ludhiana district with 8,07,235 tonne of procurement was ranked at third.