Months after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged states to lift their quantity of allocated foodgrain under various schemes to effectively bring down prices in the spot markets, it is only the southern states that have shown some urgency in lifting foodgrain allocated under Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS) that too for rice.
Since October 2009, the government had allocated one million tonne of rice to the states to be sold for distribution to retail consumers through various channels available with them. This allocation is over and above the foodgrains allocated under the TPDS.
Data accessed from Food Corporation of India (FCI) indicate that till now of the total rice lifting by states under OMSS to the tune of 6.52 lakh tonne, key southern states including Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have lifted 5.86 lakh tonne of rice.
While Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have lifted 3.78 lakh tonne and 1.52 lakh tonne, respectively, Kerala and Karnataka have bought 13,000 tonne and 42,000 tonne of rice, respectively.
The purpose of OMSS is to sell excess wheat and rice stocks held with FCI and state agencies to retail as well as bulk consumer to bring down prices. On June 1, FCI had rice stocks of around 24.2 million tonne and wheat stocks of 33.5 million tonne, respectively.
