In a move to facilitate smooth lifting of paddy in the ‘mandis’, the Punjab government has amended the provisions of paddy procurement policy to enhance the eligibility quota of the rice mills by 500 metric tonnes (MT) per mill. Disclosing this here today, Food and Civil Supplies Department Director D S Grewal said that under the amended provisions of the policy, a rice mill with an installed capacity of one MT would now be allotted 3,000 MT of free paddy instead of earlier quota of 2,500 MT. Likewise, rice mills with an installed capacity of two MT would now be eligible to lift 4,500 MT of free paddy against the earlier allotted quota of 4,000 MT. The amended procurement policy would be applicable to the districts of Bathinda, Mansa, Sangrur, Barnala, Moga, Faridkot and Muktsar.
Grewal further said that this move was aimed at resolving the problem of lifting of paddy in the mandis created by heavy arrival due to bumper crop this season besides taking care of the short fall of milling capacity caused by 271 rice mills declared defaulter by the FCI. Lifting of paddy by the local mills would also now result in saving exorbitant cost incurred on account of transporting paddy from one district to another.
It may be recalled that Punjab is all set to cross the procurement mark of 140 lakh MT of paddy during the current Kharif marketing season as the government agencies and private millers had already procured 137.38 lakh MT of paddy till Monday evening.
