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Our Bureau

Hyderabad, June 8

The National Egg Co Ordination Committee (NECC) has appealed to the Union Government to impose a stock ceiling on maize and soya meal on traders.

“This will help more of these stocks enter into the market and bring down prices,” Ms Anuradha Desai, Chairperson of NECC, said.

In an appeal to the Centre, a copy of which was released to the media here, she said while maize price was crossing the Rs 1,200-mark (from Rs 525 a quintal last year), the price of soya meal had gone up to Rs 20,000 a tonne from Rs 8,000. As a result, the break-even level for egg production had gone up to Rs 2 from Rs 1 and that of broilers had gone up from to Rs 41-48 from Rs 28.

“In the absence of a corresponding increase in farm-gate price, the farmers have suffered huge losses.

The industry’s morale is extremely low,” she said.

Alleging that some multi-national companies and thousands of local traders were holding lakhs of tonnes of these commodities anticipating further raise in prices, she said this unprecedented and unjustifiable increase in prices happened despite a substantial increase in production of maize from 14 million tonnes last year to 18.4 million tonnes this year, a growth of 31.50 per cent.

The Government acts to bring these stocks out of the traders’ go-downs, the commodities may not be available to the farmers at any price.

The trade estimates pegged export of maize at 30 lakh tonnes in 2007-08 as against 2.7 lakh tonnes in 2006-07.

Pointing out that curbs imposedd by Argentina and Brazil on export of maize, she said the focus was on India for sourcing maize.

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