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State-owned Food Corporation of India (FCI) has moved 9.86 lakh tonnes of wheat and rice to different States since the lockdown was announced, on March 24, to help distribute foodgrains to the needy, an official statement has said.
The Ministry of Agriculture, in a statement issued late Wednesday evening, said the FCI has dispatched 352 rakes carrying foodgrains to help meet the requirement under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) as well as the special package of free 5 kg rice or wheat per month for three months, announced as part of the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana to 81.35 crore families. Under the NFSA, the targeted population gets 5 kg foodgrain each per month at a subsidised rate of ₹2 or ₹3 a kg.
As on March 31, FCI had a total of 56.75 million tonnes of foodgrains — 30.7 mt of rice and 26.06 mt of wheat. It is conducting an e-auction under the Open Market Sales Scheme (OMSS) for providing wheat to empanelled roller flour mills/State governments to ease the supply constraint in the market. In the last e-auction, held on Tuesday, bids for 1.44 lakh tonnes of wheat were received.
Direct lifting
Besides, in view of the pandemic, apart from the regular e-auction, district magistrates and collectors have been authorised to lift directly from FCI depots at the OMSS reserve price to cater to the needs of roller flour mills and other wheat product manufactures. Till now, 79,027 tonnes of wheat have been allotted to different States. While Uttar Pradesh and Bihar got 35,675 tonnes and 22,870 tonnes, respectively, Himachal Pradesh received 11,500 tonnes. Among the other States that received wheat under this scheme were Punjab, Haryana, Goa, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan.
A similar e-auction conducted for rice on Tuesday received bids for 77,000 tonnes, mainly from Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir.
Similarly, some States have been allowed to take rice under OMSS at ₹22.50/kg without participating in the e-auction to meet any requirement over and above the NFSA allotment and additional allocation done under PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana. So far, 93,387 tonnes of rice have been allotted to Telangana (50,000 tonnes), Assam (16,160 tonnes), Meghalaya (11,727 tonnes), Manipur (10,000 tonnes), Goa (4,500 tonnes) and Arunachal Pradesh (1,000 tonnes), the statement said.
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