Maya booster for Union govt's procurement

The new government in Uttar Pradesh, the largest wheat-growing state in the country, has helped the central government in augmenting its wheat purchase in the state to some extent.

After the new government led by Mayawati came to power on May 13, the central government's average daily wheat purchase jumped from about 3,000 tonnes a day to 15,000 tonnes.

Uttar Pradesh is estimated to produce 225 lakh tonnes of wheat in this rabi season as against the country's total production estimate of 737 lakh tonnes. However, wheat arrivals across the state mandis so far have been 9.3 lakh tonnes compared with the last year's 8.98 lakh tonnes. Of this, the central government has been able to buy close to 3 lakh tonnes through its procurement agencies, Food Corporation of India (FCI) and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed).

"While the new administrative set-up has improved our purchase in Uttar Pradesh, a minimum of 20-25 lakh tonnes of wheat should have come to mandis by this time. It is suspected that traders have purchased huge quantities of wheat outside mandis to evade the Rs 70 a quintal tax. This must have also helped them to offer a price higher than the government's minimum support price of Rs 850 a quintal," said Alok Sinha, chairman and managing director of FCI.

"We are hopeful of procuring about 5 lakh tonnes wheat from Uttar Pradesh this year", said Alok Ranjan, managing director of Nafed, the agency that is working with FCI in Uttar Pradesh for wheat procurement.

The central government had set a target of purchasing 15 lakh tonnes of wheat from Uttar Pradesh. However, wheat purchase by the government in the state has been on the decline for the past few years. It came down from 17.43 lakh tonnes in 2004-05 to 5.60 lakh tonnes in 2005-06 and fell further to 49,000 tonnes in 2006-07.