Centre to add another 1,000 mandis to eNAM

The government would integrate an additional 1,000 mandis with electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM) in the coming financial year to enhance farmers’ access to multiple markets and buyers across the country, an official statement said on Thursday.

The Agriculture Ministry has linked 1,000 mandis in the country to eNAM and the latest Budget has made provisions for extending this to another 1,000 mandis, the statement said adding that over 1.69 crore farmers and 1.55 lakh traders have already registered on the digital platform.

The digital trading system so far has seen trading of 41.3 million tonnes of bulk commodities and 36.8 million coconut and bamboo worth approximately ₹1.22-lakh crore, it said.

During Covid-19, e-NAM platform/mobile app was further strengthened by launching FPO trading module in e-NAM whereby farmer producer organisations (FPOs) can trade their produce from their collection centres without bringing the produce to mandis. So far, 1,844 FPOs have been on board on e-NAM platform. In addition, warehouse based trading module was also launched. To facilitate inter-mandi and inter-state trade at this juncture, enhanced version of logistic module was released whereby aggregators of transport logistic platform have on boarded which helps users to track their produce.

Similarly, the e-NAM platform is now inter operable with an electronic market platform of Karnataka government which will facilitate farmers of either platforms to sell their produce in other platform and thus increase their market access.

“e-NAM is not just a scheme but it’s a journey which aims to benefit farmers and transform the way they sell their agri produce. This intervention brings immense benefits to our farmers in augmenting their income by enabling them to realise competitive and remunerative prices in a transparent manner without incurring additional costs,” the statement said.