Grain exporters lifted over 16.12 million tonne of wheat and rice from government stocks for exports till December-end 2002. This includes 10.4 million tonne of wheat and 5.72 million tonne of rice.
The grains were offered to exporters from the stocks held by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) at concessional rates in a bid to prune food inventories that had grown several folds over the prescribed buffer stocking norms.
Besides, the government had also decided to permit FCI to offer two million tonne of wheat from the central grain pool to the roller flour mills for export of wheat products.
According to the annual report of the department of food and public distribution, the central pool has been created primarily to maintain a minimum butter stock for meeting unforeseen exigencies like drought, floods and other natural calamities and also for providing foodgrains required for public distribution system and food based welfare programme.
FCI has been selling foodgrains at predetermined prices in the open market from time to time to achieve the objectives of enhancing supply of foodgrains during the lean season to maintain the price line.
This has, in turn, helped to get rid of the excess stocks and reduce the carrying cost of foodgrains. Moreover, this has facilitated vacation of storage space for freshly procured foodgrains.
In 2001-02, the official target of selling five million tonne of wheat in the open market was exceeded with the actual sale being 5.18 million tonnes The target for 2002-03 was kept unchanged at five million tonne.
The actual sales through this route in the first six months of the year (up to September 2002) was 2.5 million tonne.
The report points out that Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Uttranchal and Tamil Nadu have agreed to implement the decentralised grain procurement scheme.
These states have, thus, taken on the responsibility of not only procuring foodgrains from within the state but also distributing the same to the targeted population through the public distribution system.
Under this scheme, the state-specific economic cost is determined by the Centre and the difference between the economic cost and the central issue price is passed on to the states as food subsidy. Efforts are being made to persuade other states to adopt this scheme.
