The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed) is finding it difficult to sell groundnut stocks, procured from farmers at minimum support prices on behalf of the Gujarat government, to oil millers and traders due to quality and price issues.
Market sources said currently Nafed is selling groundnut at below par prices. The agency had procured over 8 lakh tonne of groundnut from Gujarat at MSP of Rs 4,450. With the state government announcing bonus of Rs 50 per quintal, the procurement price increased to Rs 4,500 per quintal.
However, at present Nafed is selling the groundnut in Gujarat at Rs 3,500-3,600 per quintal. It has started selling groundnut from April this year but so far only 1,300 tonne from 2017-18 procurement have been sold. According to sources in Nafed, traders and millers prefer to buy 2016-17 stock as its price is lower than new stock.
“Out of 8 lakh tonne of total procurement for the year 2017-18, we have sold about 1,300 tonne only so far while from the old stock we have sold about 75,000 tonne. We are making loss as our procurement and maintenance costs are much higher than current selling price of Rs 3,500-3,600 per 100 kg,” said a top official of Nafed in Gujarat.
Recently, the Gujarat government and Nafed held a meeting with the traders and oil millers in Gondal to discuss the disposal of groundnut stock. Nafed chairman Vaghjibhai Boda; state agriculture minister R C Faldu; state food, civil supplies and consumer affairs minister Jayesh Radadiya; principal secretary in agriculture Sanjay Prasad and top officials of Nafed and state government and around 250 oil millers and industry chamber representatives were present at the meeting.
Millers and traders expressed unwillingness to buy groundnut in big quantities as it is available at the lower rate. “We have suggested to the state government to give contracts to the oil millers and processors for crushing and processing for the government. The edible oil and peanuts produced from this can be used for mid-day meal schemes and sold under PDS,” said Samir Shah, president, Saurashtra Oil Mills Association (Soma).
Nafed will soon invite price bids from groundnut processing units and oil mills for processing and crushing. Tenders will be announced most probably in next week. According to Nafed sources, looking at the current scenario of groundnut selling, it will take over a year to off-load the entire stock. Nafed is under pressure from the state and the central governments to ramp up its sale operations.
