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The Centre has moved forward on the question of an import duty on wheat with the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, placing a copy of the notification regarding the subject before the Lok Sabha on Friday.
The notification dated August 7 sought to impose a Customs duty of 10 per cent wheat till March 31, 2016, under Section 159 of the Customs Act, 1962. The step had been suggested by the Food Ministry in June to curb the premium quality Australian wheat shipments in order to liquidate the stocks lying with the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
Global prices of Australian wheat, in the range of $265-270/tonne, are viable for flour millers to buy, particularly those in South India. Flour millers have entered into a contract for about 0.5 million tonnes (mt) worth of imports since they found it difficult to procure good quality domestic grain.
FCI has procured about 28.1 mt this year but almost 26.6 mt is believed to have been purchased under relaxed quality norms after the standing crops had been damaged by unseasonal rain between end-February and early-April.
Wheat output is estimated at 90.78 mt in 2014-15 against a record production of 95.85 mt the year before. Still, the government has a huge stock of over 40 mt due to bumper procurement this year and carryover stock from the previous years.
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