Govt scraps wheat tender citing high prices

The government today scrapped a tender to import wheat citing high prices, and will not import more wheat this season as the current buffer stock is comfortable.

"We have scrapped the tender. Prices were high," Commerce Secretary G K Pillai said.

State Trading Corporation, which was to import wheat on behalf of the government, had floated a tender to import wheat on December 10. The corporation received three bids from global suppliers in the range of $459.9-579.6 per tonne for supply of about 3.15 lakh tonne.

Swiss firm Glencore, US trading company Cargill and Germany's Toepfer submitted bids for the tender, sources said.

When asked whether the government plans to float more tenders to import five lakh tonne out of the planned 10 lakh tonne, Pillai said: "We will not import more wheat this year. We have reasonable amount of buffer stock now."

The stock position of wheat with Food Corporation of India today stands at 76.64 lakh tonne while the buffer norms stipulate a stock of 82 lakh tonne as on January 1, 2008.

The commerce ministry had earlier this month allowed PEC to import 1.5 lakh tonne wheat at $396.9 per tonne. On November 23, MMTC decided to buy 3.425 lakh tonne at an average price of $400.19 per tonne.

While Australia-based J K International would supply wheat to PEC, Cargill and Glencore would supply to MMTC.