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Harish Damodaran

New Delhi, Aug 24

There is no immediate plan to undertake open market sale of rice from Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) stocks, a top Food Ministry official said.

The stocks of rice in the Central pool as on July 1, at 112.49 lakh tonnes (lt), were more than the normative minimum buffer of 98 lt for that date. “But this is not adequate for us to operate an open market sale scheme similar to the one proposed for wheat, where the July 1 stocks of 249.12 lt are nearly 80 lt more than the corresponding buffer norm of 171 lt”, the official noted.

The Centre’s objective is to build a ‘strategic’ grain reserve of 50 lt (over and above the buffer) for all time, comprising 30 lt wheat and 20 lt rice.

“We have already managed to do it in wheat. We hope to do so for rice when the new kharif marketing season starts in October”, he added.

Till then, the maximum that the Centre would do on the rice front is to make additional above poverty line (APL) allocations to the State Governments.

“And even here, we will give priority to States such as Mizoram and Manipur, where bamboo flowering and subsequent rampage of rats have destroyed the standing paddy crop”, the official said.

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