With the Food Corporation of India (FCI) facing huge storage crunch, the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWG) has once again come to its rescue offering to create an additional capacity to the tune of more than 1.15 million tonne from its available vacant land.
Sourced told FE that FCI has agreed to avail the space held by CWC for storing 2.4 lakh tonne of food grain. As reported by FE earlier, the CWC has already signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with FCI for creation of additional storage space to the tune of 1.18 lakh tonne during the current financial year.
The gap between FCI?s available storage infrastructure and total stocks has touched a whopping 20 million tonne.
Under the FCI?s private entrepreneurs godowns (PEG) scheme, which guarantees six year guaranteed occupancies, CWC has already created 6 lakh tonne of additional capacity for FCI till now. The next High Level Committee on storage comprising of officials from the food ministry and FCI is expected to hold its next meeting sometime in the middle of this month.
?Creating additional capacities is a long drawn process,? Siraj Hussain, chairman and managing director, FCI told FE.
A food ministry official said FCI is facing not only acute storage shortage in key wheat growing states such as Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh, there is hardly any significant storage space available in states such as Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar, where rice production has increased significantly during last five years.
?There is substantial shortfalls in storage space mainly because of the states have not made significant investment in enhancing storage capacities,? Hussain had recently said.