Paddy procurement to starts in Chhattisgarh on Monday

Procurement advanced by 15 days due to huge cash flow in rural economy, and consequent boom in market during Diwali

Paddy procurement in Chhattisgarh will start from Monday, enabling farmers to sell their produce at the minimum support price (MSP), which was hiked by Rs 50 a quintal for the kharif marketing season 2015-16.

The state-run Chhattisgarh Marketing Federation will purchase paddy directly from farmers. The federation had set up 1,976 procurement centres under the 1,287 primary agricultural cooperative societies set up across the state. A high-tech system had been put in place to minutely monitor the procurement process.

A state government spokesperson said that paddy procurement will start on November 16 instead of December 1 as announced earlier, and will continue till January 31, 2016. Earlier, paddy procurement in the state used to start from November 1. Since there was a huge cash flow in the rural economy, a boom was seen during Diwali in a market that otherwise remained sluggish this year.

The Union Government had increased the MSP for the current kharif marketing season by Rs 50 per quintal. The government had fixed the MSP of common variety paddy at Rs 1,410 and grade A variety grain at Rs 1,450 per quintal. Following fiscal constraints, the state government will continue to put a cap on paddy procurement introduced last year and would purchase 15 quintal paddy behind every acre.

As against 7.64 million tonnes of paddy produced during the kharif 2014, the state is set a target to produce 7.65 million tonnes this year. In the kharif marketing season 2014-15, the state government had procured about 6.5 million tonnes of paddy from farmers.