Commodity market regulator FMC will install at least 180 display boards at locations such as rural post offices, Krishi Vigyan Kendras and APMCs across the country in the next 10 days to provide prices of farm commodity futures to farmers.
"We will set up 180 ticker boards in another 10 days and 1,000 by the next financial year," Forward Markets Commission Chairman B C Khatua told PTI from Mumbai.
The ticker boards will be put up at agriculture produce marketing committee (APMC) yards, post offices in villages and Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) across the country to help farmers access information on a real-time basis and benefit from the futures price movement, he said.
The installation of ticker boards across the country is part of the Price Dissemination Project. However, the project could not take off during the beginning of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12) due to the delay in getting final clearance from the concerned ministries.
Citing reasons for the delay, Khatua said, "The project was approved by the Finance Ministry only in January 2008 and the National Information Centre (NIC) of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology took longer duration to vet the same.
"We cleared all procedural formalities last month."
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Raising concern over the under-utilisation of funds earmarked for the project, a Parliamentary standing committee on Food and Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution last month had asked the Consumer Affairs Ministry to complete the project expeditiously.
The functions of FMC come under the purview of the Consumer Affairs Ministry.
The committee had noted that the ministry had spend only Rs 2.17 crore out of Rs 10 crore earmarked for 2007-08 fiscal for strengthening of FMC and setting up of the project.
"Now that the groundwork has been laid, FMC aims to set up as many ticker boards as possible by the end of current fiscal," the regulator said.