The private millers and traders in Punjab are playing a significant role in current paddy procurment season as compared to last year. Already, the private millers in the state have procured over 3.53 lakh tonnes of paddy till Sunday (October 30) in the ongoing procurement season, while last year they managed to procure only 1.91 lakh tonnes of paddy in the entire procurement season.
Presently, about 70 per cent of the total anticipated production of 140 lakh tonnes of paddy arrived in the different mandis of the state. The government agencies and private millers procured more than 9.75 million tonnes of paddy till Sunday. Out of total procurement of 9.75 million tonnes of paddy in all the procurement centers of Punjab, government agencies procured 9.39 million tonnes of paddy (96.4 per cent) whereas private traders procured 3.53 lakh tonnes (3.6 per cent) of paddy.
Experts are of the view that the Punjab government recent decision to allow levy free private purchase of non basmati paddy and also centre’s decision to lift the ban on the export of non basmati rice has motivated the private traders or millers in the procurement process in the state.
It is worth mentioning that levy paddy means paddy purchased by a rice miller with his own resources. Under the regulations, earlier private millers in the state were bound to give 75 per cent of the rice out of their private purchase to the central pool. Now the government has allowed levy free private purchase.
Earlier, Punjab, Punjab Food & Civil Supplies Minister Adesh Partap Singh Kairon said that out of two Million tonne of non-basmati rice being exported from the country, Punjab was all set to export one Million tonne to the tune of Rs 2,500 crore during the kharif marketing season 2011-12. Kairon said that the centre has lifted the ban on the export of non basmati rice in the month of September and now the export of rice had only been permitted from private trade and not from the central pool.
The Food & Civil Supplies Minister further said that the Punjab Cabinet under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal gave a nod to allow levy free private purchase of non basmati paddy recently.
Besides that recently the Cabinet also approved to refund the infrastructure development cess on the rice exported from the state. It may be recalled that the ID cess was 3% which would be refunded along with other taxes on the production of the proof of rice exported from Punjab. It is also likley to help in boosting exports from the state.
The Minister further said that the state government had taken this decision pro-actively to ensure remunerative prices to the farmers over and above the MSP on one hand and to facilitate the private exporters to purchase paddy from mandis on the other.
Analyst says besides these reasons there is also one more reason which is motivating the private millers. Like, last year, Food Corporation of India(FCI) was allocated 126 exclusive mandis in Punjab to operate while 119 mandis it was sharing with the state agencies and private millers. While this year, the state government has allowed all the agencies, private millers to share all mandis with FCI.
