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The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) has spent about ₹10,000 crore in procuring pulses and creating a national buffer-stock of 20 lakh tonnes.
NAFED Managing Director Sanjeev Kumar Chadha told BusinessLine that the Finance Ministry provided the budgetary funds over the past 18 months, spread over two fiscals. In the next 12-15 months, this stock will get liquidated and the proceeds from the sale will help NAFED rotate the funds.
ProcurementOf the 20-lakh-tonne inventory, about 12 lakh tonnes consist of toor dal, which NAFED had bought since December 15, 2016. Ideally, the NAFED procurement should have been completed in 90 days, but due to huge arrivals in markets, especially Maharashtra, it will continue to buy till May 31.
Chadha said NAFED is handling such a large volume of pulses for the first time and this has its own learning lessons. A number of options are being worked out so that the pulses stock gets distributed evenly throughout the country. Steps are being taken to supply to non-pulse growing States for their midday-meal schemes.
Paramilitary forces such as the BSF and the CRPF, and the Army will be supplied with about 1.5 lakh tonnes of pulses over the next 12 months. The Karnataka government has sought about 1.5 lakh tonnes. Chadha pointed that the security forces will get milled and un-milled pulses depending on their requirement. The pulses will be checked by food laboratories for quality. NAFED has floated tenders for milling of pulses.
The stocks that remain, Chadha said, will be sold through the open-market mechanism. In the interim, if the prices fall drastically, NAFED will again intervene in the market. Recently, the federation had intervened to stabilise the prices of chickpea (chana), Chadha said.
Chadha said NAFED is not facing any problems with storing of pulses as it has an MoU with the Central Warehousing Corporation.
However, there were some issues due to a shortage of jute bags for packaging the pulses. State governments had provided the federation with wrong projections on the market arrival of pulses, but now this issue has also been sorted out. There was only a temporary shortage of bags, he said.
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