No halt to sale of wheat & rice by FCI
By Sandip Das
The government will continue to sell surplus grain stock in the open market to control rise in cereal inflation, a senior food ministry official on Wednesday said, adding that it has more than double grain stock to carry out market intervention programme.
“Through open market sale scheme (OMSS)of wheat and rice, we are aiming at controlling cereal inflation to the maximum possible extent,” Ashok Meena, chairman and managing director, Food Corporation of India (FCI) said in a briefing.
On January 1, FCI had rice and wheat stocks of 34.49 million tonne (MT) while 33.27 MT of rice is yet to be receivable from millers. Total foodgrains stock is against the buffer of 21.04 MT.
According to Meena, while open market sale of wheat has received encouraging response from the bulk buyers such as flour millers, purchase of rice by bulk buyers have not been encouraging.
“The open market sale of wheat has helped in stabilising prices,” he said adding that the corporation is looking at selling wheat till the middle of March which would result in grain stock falling close to buffer of 7.46 MT by April.
The wheat stocks with FCI was 16.47 MT as of Jan. 1 against a buffer of 13.8 MT. The Jan. 1 inventories of wheat are the lowest since 2017. Meanwhile, the FCI sold 362,000 tonne of wheat bulk buyers on Wednesday through weekly e-auction, the highest sales since OMSS was launched in June to improve domestic supplies of the grain.
The latest sale price is against a reserve price of Rs 2,129/quintal and compared with a high of Rs 2,310 realised for the week ended October 26. Since June, FCI so far has sold 5.87 MT of wheat from its stock through weekly e-auctions.
As per earlier policy, the corporation had been selling surplus wheat to bulk buyers like flour millers only during the lean season (January-March). Procurement of wheat for the 2024-25 marketing season (April-June) would commence from April 1.
However, the FCI has sold only 0.14 MT of rice through e-auction since July. Inflation in wheat declined 6.36% in December from 7.6% in October. However inflation in rice has been double digit for the last one year and was 11.81% in December.
Meena said that the country’s wheat production is expected to touch a new record of 114 MT in the ongoing 2023-24 crop year on higher coverage and provided weather conditions remain normal.
“We expect that total area under cultivation of wheat will increase this year and God willingly if the climate is alright the production will be 114 MT that’s what the agriculture ministry has indicated informally to us,” he said.
On wheat output, he said “If that is the level of production, we are very confident that we will be able to procure more than our requirement and also additional stocks needed for the Open Market Sale Scheme for next year,” he noted.
This article has been republished from The Financial Express.