Govt demands FCI to hire private godowns to store fresh crop

Food Minister K V Thomas held that the state-run FCI (Food Corporation of India) has been called for to hire private godowns in order to store fresh crop and he called food-grains storage as a challenging task in view of the record yield. He held that efforts are on to make extra storage capacity for storing fresh wheat crop being procured presently by FCI. The government currently has capacity to store 66 million tonnes of wheat and rice. He said the FCI has also been asked to enhance its capacity utilization beyond the existing 85 per cent. He also said that the government could consider releasing wheat and rice in the open market and through ration shops.
To this, Food Secretary B C Gupta endorsed that in order to relieve pressure on storage, the Food Ministry is taking a proposal before the panel of Ministers to apportion extra 8 million tonnes of food-grains to BPL families.

As per the latest data released by the Agriculture Ministry, the nation is approximated to have harvested record rice crop at 103.41 million tonne and wheat crop at 90.23 million tonnes in the 2011-12 crop year.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2012