Food Corporation has negligible stock of major pulses
23-Jul-2024 03:42 PM
New Delhi. Although the work of Food Corporation of India (FCI), an agency subordinate to the Union Ministry of Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, is mainly to buy, store and distribute rice (paddy), wheat and coarse grains in limited quantities, but a few years ago it was also entrusted with the responsibility of buying and selling pulses.
The corporation was asked to buy pulses under the Price Support Scheme (PSS) as well as the Price Stabilization Fund (PSF) scheme. However,
the government purchase of pulses and oilseeds is mainly done by the subordinate agency of the Department of Agriculture - NAFED and another cooperative agency - NCCF.
According to the available data, on 15 July 2024, the Food Corporation had no or negligible stock of pulses like gram, moong, urad and tuvar because it sold almost the entire part of whatever it had purchased or distributed it under welfare schemes.
Limited quantity of pulses has been purchased by the corporation. The corporation created a stock of 46.10 tonnes of gram in the Rabi season of 2019-20, 15,226 tonnes in 2020-21, 6343 tonnes in 2021-22 and 73,650 tonnes in 2022-23 in Maharashtra and also sold it regularly.
As a result, its stock almost ended. Similarly, the corporation had a stock of about 6 thousand tonnes of moong there, which after the sale is now only about 10 tonnes. 207 tonnes of moong was purchased in Madhya Pradesh in 2018-19.
The stock of moong purchased under PSS and PSF with the Food Corporation is almost over. The case of urad is also similar. In the season 2018-19,
it was procured in Andhra Pradesh at 493 tonnes and in Maharashtra at 3636 tonnes and distributed 451 tonnes and 3584 tonnes respectively. 52,851 tonnes of urad was procured in Madhya Pradesh and distributed as well.
As a result, no significant stock of urad remained with the Food Corporation. As far as tuvar is concerned, the corporation procured 1612 tonnes in Gujarat during 2019-20 and distributed 1399 tonnes and a stock of 813 tonnes remained.
17 tonnes of tuvar was procured in Kharif 2020-21 and 17 tonnes in 2021-22 as well. In Karnataka, 15342 tonnes were procured during 2018-19 and 15334 tonnes were distributed. Maharashtra had a stock of about 9260 tonnes of tur during the 2019-20 season, out of which 8388 tonnes were distributed. The purchase and sale of other years was also limited.