New Delhi, June 4
In an effort to prevent the rotting of old stocks, the government will dispose of one million tonnes of wheat from official granaries within the next month, Union Food Minister Sharad Yadav said here today.
“An estimated one million tonnes of wheat in official granaries belongs to old crops harvested four to five 4-5 years ago. Directives have been given to dispose it of in one month,” the minister told newspersons here today.
While ex-granary rates will be fixed for exporters, the rates for the domestic market will be fixed after discussion with the states.
“These grains are not rotting. The latest initiative of Food Ministry is to dispose them of before they begin to rot”, Mr Yadav said.
The minister said the Prime Minister had convened a meeting of Agriculture and Food ministers here to work out a strategy to bail out the beleagured sugarcane growers of Uttar Pradesh.
On India’s current foodgrain position, Mr Yadav said the stock of grains had fallen to 413.35 lakh tonnes as on May 1, 2003 as compared to 624.68 lakh tonnes on the same date last year.
The dip in foodgrains stock was primarily due to the increase in food-for-work schemes, increase of offtake in the domestic market, increase in exports and fall in procurement due to drought, he said.
The minister said wheat procurement by government agencies in 2002-03 would be about 160 lakh tonnes — lower than 206.3 lakh tonnes last year.
Meanwhile, a long-term approach with financial and legislative support, including setting up a corpus fund of Rs 500 crore, to tackle calamities such as drought and floods, was recommended by the Crisis Management Group in a report submitted to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee here today.
