After pulses and onion, the government has decided to create a buffer stock of potatoes so that a possible spike in prices from any fall in rabi output is dealt with in the coming months, food minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Tuesday said in the Lok Sabha.
Paswan said the buffer stock of potato would be created using the R900-crore price stablisation fund (PSF) allocated for 2016-17. “Government is considering creating buffer stock of potato during year 2016 keeping in view the price trend of potato,” Paswan said in a written reply.
According official estimates, the rabi potato crop is estimated to fall by around 11% in 2015-16 compared to 2014-15 and “prices are likely to increase in the coming months”, he said. In 2014-15, total potato output was reported at 48 million tonne (MT). Unfavourable weather conditions and late blight disease in some pockets of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are some of the key reasons attributed to the lower output, he has informed the Lok Sabh
Recently, the government had announced that agencies would buy 15,000 tonne of onion from farmers in Maharashtra to create a buffer stock. This will be utilised for market intervention in the event of a price rise during lean months, especially during October-December.The procurement of onion would begin from next month because a late kharif arrival across the mandis has pulled down the prices.
Last year, the retail price of onion rose to about R80 per kg in October in Delhi. The sharp rise in prices had forced the government to boost supply in the market by purchasing onions from domestic as well as overseas market. “We have decided to buy 15,000 tonne of onion from next month from Lasalgaon in Maharashtra,” consumer affairs secretary C Viswanath said.
He said nodal agencies Nafed and Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) will do the procurement of onion.
Recently the government had announced that agencies have procured 51,000 MT of kharif pulses for the buffer stock against the target of 50,000 MT. The agencies like FCI, Nafed and SFAC had been asked to start procurement of masoor, gram dal and other rabi pulses also which have the total target of 1 lakh MT.