Allaying fears that the ambitious food security bill may not be enacted in the next financial year due to meagre allocation for food subsidy in the Budget, the government on Wednesday said the legislation was expected to implemented by December-end.
The food ministry is mulling changes in various set-ups like the public distribution system for the smooth execution of a food security law, but the Act would increase the food subsidy considerably, almost by 50 per cent over the Budget allocation.
"We intend to implement the Food Security Act by the end of December 2012," food minister K V Thomas told reporters on the sidelines of an event.
Food subsidy allocation in the Budget 2012-2013 has been hiked by just three per cent from the previous year to Rs 75,000 crore fuelled talk of an impending delay in nationwide roll-out of the Act in the next financial year, as the subsidy required to fully implement the legislation will be in excess of Rs 100,000 crore.
After the socio-caste census is out, expected by July 2012, the requirement for food subsidy will anyway go up to Rs 1.09 lakh crore. After the food security law is enforced, there would be additional need of Rs 3,000-4,000 crore, Thomas said.
“Once the new law is implemented, the subsidy bill will go up to Rs 1.12 lakh crore. The government has capacity to absorb additional subsidy of Rs 3,000-4,000 crore," he added. For the current financial year, the food subsidy requirement is estimated to be around Rs 88,000 crore against revised estimates of around Rs 72,000 crore, Thomas said.
The unchanged ways and means advance of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) at Rs 10,000 crore lent credence to the rumour. The advance pertains to cash flow requirement for procurement, storage and handling. Thomas said the production estimate of agriculture ministry shows the country seemed to have enough foodgrain to meet the requirement under the proposed Act as well as exports till 2014.
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As on March 1, 2012, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) had around 55 million tonnes of grains in the central pool, a mere 9-10 million tonnes less than the estimated grain required to operationalise the food security Bill.
The Bill, which seeks to provide a legal entitlement over a subsidised foodgrains to 63.5 per cent of the country's population, is being vetted by a Parliamentary Standing Committee.
Thomas said his ministry will be looking into the findings of the socio-economic caste census to decide on the beneficiaries of the food security law.
The Planning Commission has already made it clear that its estimates, which showed that percentage of the poor declined at double the rate a year during 2004-05 and 2009-10 from a decade earlier, will not be used for fixing entitlements under various social welfare schemes including food law.
The poverty estimates are made to assess the impact of government's various programmes on poverty, the Commission had said yesterday.
Poverty in the country, as per the new data, has declined by 7.4 per centage points in the last five years from 37.2 percent to 29.8 per cent. Between 2004 -05 and 2009-10 it declined by an average of 1.46 per cent per year, almost double of 0.74 per cent annual decline in the preceding 10 years. End