After Reliance Fresh, it?s the turn of Reliance Retail to stir up a controversy with its collection centre, Ranger Farms, winding operations in the country and sacking over 1,000 employees across Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal. According to sources, collection centres mostly in the North will be affected.
Ranger farm is a collection centre where the agents deposit the farm produce procured from individual farmers. The produce is then graded and sorted.
Reliance Retail on an average procures farm produce worth Rs 15 lakh a day in Punjab. At present, Reliance has around 200 ranger farms across the country.
According to sources, with the slackening of store rollouts, the expected scales will not be achieved, making many centres unviable. A collection centre caters for up to 10 villages in a state and are arranged in the hub-and-spoke model.
Currently, Reliance has to pay double taxes while procuring farm produce through the ranger farm set-up. A tax of 2.5% on the procured produce has to be paid to the Agricultural Produce and Marketing Corporation mandi (APMC) twice in this particular set-up.
These collection centres have been procuring from farmers at prices higher than the minimum support prices.
?The company had planned to open significant collection centres in Uttar Pradesh, and it had opened a few before the shutters were pulled down on the Reliance Fresh stores?, sources told FE.