With farmers still bringing in wheat to various procurement outlets of Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state government-owned agencies, the government is all set to purchase an all time record of 28 million tonne of key food grains by the end of this month when the current purchase season officially gets over.
Till Monday, FCI has purchased 27.4 million tonne of wheat which is a record in itself and has surpassed this year’s target of 26 mt. The earlier record of procurement was 25.36 mt, which was achieved during 2009-10.
?Daily arrivals of wheat in various mandis had been around 1.25 lakh tonne out of which more than 86,000 tonne is purchased by agencies,? a FCI official told FE. He said that the procurement would continue till the end of the June.
At present most of the wheat arrivals has been witnessed in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Punjab has contributed more than 10.94 million tonne this season to the central pool against 10.16 million tonne achieved last year.
Haryana’ contribution had been more than 6.88 million tonne to central stocks against 6.34 million tonne in the last fiscal. In Uttar Pradesh, the government this year has purchased more than 3 million tonne of wheat. Similarly in Rajasthan, the wheat purchase had been more than 1.25 million tonne against only 4.75 lakh tonne achieved last year.
Even Madhya Pradesh has contributed 4.89 million tonne of wheat against 3.53 mt reported last year. ?In all the key producing states the procurement of wheat has exceeded last year’s level,? the official said.
The government had announced a bonus of R50 per quintal for wheat farmers over and above the MSP of R1,120 per quintal.