The threat of imports, rather than actual imports, has affected the agriculture sector, Jagdish Shettigar, member, economic advisory council of the Prime Minister, has said. "Everybody today talks of the problems in the agriculture sector due to cheap imports, especially in the last one-and-a-half years. But statistics do not support this claim", Shettigar, who is also the chief of the economic cell of the BJP said.
"The actual imports have not increased with liberalisation, but, even as we have removed quantitative restrictions (QRs) on more than 10,000 items in the last 10 years," he said. "Of course, everybody is now talking of 2,714 items which have been recently removed by the NDA government," he added. But prior to that, more than 8,000 items have been removed from the QRs."
Shettigar also felt the Essential Commodities Act of 1955 is one major hurdle for the free movement of the foodgrains between states. "Though there may be foodgrain surplus in areas, they cannot be sold other deficit areas," he said.
He pointed out that normally the state agency should have come to the rescue of the farmers by procuring foodgrains. But, these state agencies have a limitation as far as procurement is concerned.
"However, these agencies are a handicap, as they lack storage capacity of more than 20 million tonne. Moreover, these agencies already have 45 million tonne in stock and hence the stock is over flowing", he said.
The farmers ultimately have to depend on the normal market where they are exploited as they know that they cannot go to the government for procurement and hence they have to sell it.
That is, the prices in certain areas, the prices are almost Rs 100 per quintal lower than the national average.
Shettigar said: "If there was free movement of foodgrains, the farmers would have taken them out from the surplus areas and sold to certain deficit areas. But as the Essential Commodities Act restricts free movement, the farmers are hit. We have demanded that this Act should be amended."
