Wheat market may get stability when sale starts under OMSS

11-Jul-2024 10:35 AM

New Delhi. The Central Food and Public Distribution Department has given in-principle permission to Food Corporation of India (FCI) to start auction sale of wheat, rice and coarse grains under Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS) and has also fixed its minimum reserve price.

Now the Food Corporation has to decide how much stock, especially of wheat, should be released for sale and when to start the process of weekly e-auction.

Actually, the surplus stock of wheat in the central pool is not very high. The Food Corporation will first have to keep sufficient stock of wheat available for distribution under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana under the National Food Security Act.

Apart from this, it will have to be seen that at any time the stock of wheat in the central pool should not be less than the minimum required quantity and at the same time an additional stock of 20 lakh tonnes of wheat should also be available for strategic reserve.

This is used in times of disaster. After using all these items, a large part of the excess stock that remains can be sold. For this, consultation will have to be done with the Food Ministry.

Since the reserve price of wheat announced by the Food Ministry will be effective from August 1, 2024 and will remain valid till March 31, 2025, it is expected that the auction sale of wheat can be started soon. Once this starts, the domestic market price of wheat is expected to stabilize to some extent.