)Our Bureau To arrest the rising trend in pulse prices in many States and to improve their availability, the Centre on Wednesday offered to sell 8.47 lakh tonnes of pulses to States at average market rates.
The decision, which would also help government procurement agencies offload their existing stocks to make way for fresh procurement, was taken at a meeting chaired by Department of Consumer Affairs Secretary Avinash Srivastava, said an official statement.
Improved availability of pulses would ease the prices, which have firmed up on account of a projected shortfall in production this year.
While there are no official estimates of kharif pulses output available, projections made by private agencies such as Skymet Weather show a decline in pulses production.
According to a recent Skymet report, the pulses output during the kharif season is estimated to be nearly 8.2 million tonnes, about 4.5 per cent lower than the 8.59 million tonnes in the previous kharif season.
As per the break-up decided at the meeting, States can purchase a maximum of 3.2 lakh tonnes of tur , 2 lakh tonnes of urad , 1.5 lakh tonnes of moong , 1.2 lakh tonnes of chana and 57,000 tonnes of masoor .
In September 2018, too, the Centre had announced a sale of 34.88 lakh tonnes of pulses to States under several welfare schemes such as mid-day meal, the public distribution system and the integrated child development scheme with a subsidy of ₹15 per kg.
The scheme was available for 12 months.
As on December 16, the stocks of pulses available under the price stabilisation system are around 20.77 lakh tonnes, according to Nafed (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India) website.