July 13, 2012

India keeps 50% of wheat to safe place on damage fear

Almost half of 6.6 million tonnes of Indian wheat kept in open in Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan has already been moved to safe places, fearing damage from monsoon rains, the government said Thursday (July 12).

The government is grappling with the problem of plenty as its godowns are overflowing with over 82 million tonnes of food grains against the storing capacity of 64 million tonnes.

"We have already moved three million tonnes of wheat on a priority basis to safe places. The remaining will be transported next month," Food Minister K V Thomas told PTI.

Due to inadequate storage capacity, the government had been forced to keep 6.6 million tonnes of wheat in 'katcha' complexes in Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The Food Ministry had decided to evacuate 6.6 million tonnes on a priority basis to save grains from getting damaged during monsoon, which has progressed across the country.

To address storage crisis, the ministry had asked state governments to lift food grains meant for ration shops for next six months in advance to ease storage crisis. Besides, the government recently decided to offload additional eight million tonnes of food grains to BPL families and to bulk consumers. It has also allowed export of two million tonnes of wheat.

The godowns are full due to higher procurement and production of rice and wheat in the last few years. Initiatives undertaken by the Government have reduced damages to and loss of food grains in India from 2.5% to just 0.006% of total production during the past five years, K V Thomas, Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said on Wednesday (July 10).

Damages and losses now account for less than one lakh tonnes of the total food grain production of 8.20 crore tonnes, he said at an ASSOCHAM event in New Delhi, the industry body said here. He was inaugurating the "Fourth Global Summit on the Second Green Revolution".