Grains godowns of states to be made part of FCI’s digitised system soon

To complete digitisation of foodgrain storage facilities across states, the government will soon roll out a system for real-time tracking of rice and wheat stored in state government godowns, in terms of their volume and quality.

As part of the depot online system (DOS), around 2,200 storage facilities or godowns owned and hired by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) have already been integrated into the digital network. However, more than 14,000 godowns of the state governments haven’t been made part of the integrated system. Once these godown are linked to a central portal, rice and wheat stocks with government agencies could be ascertained on a real-time basis.

Many states including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat follow a decentralised procurement model to manage procurement, storage and distribute grain under the public distribution system (PDS). Srplus grains are handed over by them to the FCI for distribution to grain-deficient regions.

The idea is to improve operational efficiency of the FCI, which distributes around 55- 60 million tonne (mt) of grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) annually. The focus is to ensure end-to-end digitalisation of foodgrains from procurement to distribution to PDS beneficiaries.

“We are working with the states to integrate them into the common digital platform,” Atish Chandra, chairman & MD, FCI, told FE.

Food ministry officials said that at present, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand and West Bengal are at various stages of integrating their grains storage facilities with the central portal.

By next month, once all the states come on board for digitally integrating their godowns, the Centre can track food grains stocks held in the godowns of the FCI, Central Warehousing Corporation and state warehousing corporations, classified on the basis of procurement year, quality parameters and truck-wise data on the grains on transit at a single source.

Meanwhile, for tracking procurement of rice and wheat and payment of minimum support price (MSP) to farmers in key growing states, FCI has completed integration of the 21 state procurement portals with the Central Foodgrains Procurement Portal.

The economic cost of food grains procurement by the FCI, which includes expenses such as MSP payment to farmers, procurement, acquisition and distribution costs, etc for rice and wheat are Rs 3,597.17 and Rs 2,499.69 per quintal, respectively, in 2021-22, while the government distributes rice and wheat to beneficiaries under NFSA at Rs 3 and Rs 2 per kg, respectively.

The Union Budget (2022-23) has made a provision Rs 2.06 trillion under food subsidy in 2022-23. However, the government has to provide additional funds under the food subsidy head following the Union Cabinet on Saturday deciding to extend the free ration scheme — the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) announced in 2020 to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, by six months to September-end 2022, at an additional cost of Rs 80,000 crore. Savings to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore on food subsidy is expected in FY23, as rice and wheat procurement at MSP could be much lower than targets, due to robust demand for the cereals from local and export markets.