With the coffers of Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state-owned agencies overflowing with foodgrain, the food ministry has called a meeting of its high level committee (HLC) on storage on Tuesday to chalk out a long-term strategy to deal with the issue.

According to a top official, FCI has to keep a mammoth 20 million tonne of foodgrain in open under the temporary cover and plinth (CAP) facilities. As per norms, grains can be stored in CAP facilities for only six months. As on May 1, FCI and its state counterparts have 60 million tonne of food grain against permanent storage capacity of close to 40 million tonne.

?We need to chalk out action plan for substantially enhancing storage capacity in the long run as the problem of storage can not be solved in short time,? Siraj Hussain, chairman and managing director of Food Corporation of India (FCI) told FE.

Food ministry official said FCI is facing acute storage shortage not only in key wheat growing states such as Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh but there is hardly any space available even Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar because rice production has increased significantly in these places in the last five years.

The problem has become more acute this season because of huge carryover stocks from last year?s purchases, further aggravated by more than 22.36 million tonne wheat procurement till Monday. This has compelled the FCI to store more than 70% of its total procurement under CAP.

Before the start of the current procurement season, FCI had wheat stocks of more than 15 million tonne which was far above strategic reserve and buffer stocks norms.

?We admit that storage under CAP should not exceed more than six months to one year, but we don?t have an option,? BB Pattanaik, managing director of Central Warehousing Corporation had recently said.

This year the CWC has already signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with FCI for creation of additional storage space to the tune of 69,000 tonne, and recently it has also agreed to create another 49,000 storage capacity.

Analysts say that though India?s foodgrains production has crossed record levels, but storage capacities haven?t kept pace with rising production.