(Telengana)Bumper crop, FCI must buy rice for other states: Millers

Following India’s ban on export of non-basmati white rice, rice millers from Telangana have asked the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to buy it from them to supply it to other states where the Centre has projected shortage.

“There is abundant rice in Telangana. It is more than we can store. As on date, all the 3,368 rice mills in the state have 1.10 crore metric tonnes of paddy and rice stored in mills and other warehouses taken on rent. We are ready to give 30,000 to 1 lakh metric tonnes to FCI every day to ease shortage and keep prices down,” said Gampa Nagender, president of Telangana State Rice Millers Association.

Hitting out at the FCI, Nagender said: “Our lorries loaded with rice are waiting for days together at FCI warehouses to unload. But the FCI, which started troubling us by demanding only raw rice in 2021-22 ‘yasangi’ (rabi) crop, is continuing with the negative attitude. The FCI is neither taking sufficient supplies nor giving us storage space. Also, the FCI is rejecting the rice stating it lacks Fair Average Quality (FAQ) or for some other reason.”

The rice millers have exhausted the storage capacity and they won’t be able to take any quantity of paddy produced in present ‘vanakalam’ (kharif) season if the FCI does not start taking milled rice supplies from them, said association working president B Prabhaker Rao.

This article has been republished from The Times of India