Comments
Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan told reporters here on Thursday that his Ministry was in favour of Shanta Kumar-led High Level Committee’s recommendation of direct cash transfer for food subsidies and that pilot projects will be rolled out in Pondicherry and Chandigarh.
“Direct cash transfers could restrict leakages but there are problems, however, since the beneficiary need not buy foodgrains from fair price shops with the subsidy. What will happen to the grain we procure and store in the godowns? This needs to be thought out before we roll this out across the country,” he said, adding that a final decision will be taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Minister also reiterated his stand regarding the dismissal of the Committee’s recommendation, as part of an overall exercise to restructure the Food Corporation of India (FCI), to reduce the number of beneficiaries covered by the National Food Security Act (NFSA) to 40 per cent from the existing 67 per cent.
So far, 11 States have implemented the NFSA in various stages while the Centre allotted Rs.1.24 lakh crore as food subsidy for the 2015-16 fiscal.
“We have rejected this outright, there are States where there are many pressures associated with making such a move. Many have not implemented the Act as yet and this would be a wrong signal,” he said.
State-run agencies
Paswan also stated that the Food Ministry was in favour of outsourcing both the management of procurement operations and the testing of foodgrains to the private sector, with a pilot likely to be rolled out across 25 depots in Chhattisgarh for the latter.
The FCI will stop procurement operations in Haryana from April and in Punjab by next year, said Paswan, and also said that pulses and oilseeds would now be procured from farmers at the minimum support price (MSP) instead of just rice and wheat.
Paswan also refuted reports that had emerged about the Ministry scaling back its other welfare schemes and stated that monitoring was being strengthened.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.