The government’s rice procurement from farmers in the marketing year that would end in September is all set to touch the set target of 27.5 million tonne in the next few months despite making a slow start, a senior government official said on Tuesday.
“Till date, we have procured around 26.49 million tonne rice from farmers till date, which is around 1.73 million tonne more than the same period last year and we hope to reach the target by September,” Alok Sinha, chairman & managing director, Food Corporation of India (FCI) told FE.
FCI is the nodal agency that procures and stores food grains, cereals and other agriculture commodities on behalf of the government. FCI has already procured close to 23 million tonne wheat during the current season. India’s rice procurement season starts from October and continues till September. This year, rice procurement was slow to start with despite a bumper production of over 96 million tonne, as farmers preferred selling their produce to private traders due to high international and local prices. However, the government banned non-basmati rice exports in October last year to shore up local supplies and cool prices down.
Though it later relaxed the ban and allowed exports of high-priced non-basmati rice, but procurement didn’t show any tangible sign of improvement. Finally, the government re-imposed the ban on April 1, as rice prices didn’t show any sign of falling, moreover, the government’s procurement was also not improving. The move seemed to have yielded result and government procurement finally picked up.