Govt to sell more grains through open market, PDS

To clear space for storing new grains, the government is considering a variety of options, including pumping more foodgrain into the Public Distribution System (PDS) and selling additional wheat through a re-worked open market sale scheme. Officials in the food ministry said the government plans to pump in an additional 14 million tonnes of grains in the PDS this year, over and above last year’s allocation of 56 million tonnes. A high-powered meeting on storage and procurement issues, to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday, is expected to discuss all options options to vacate storage space.