The government has excluded National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed) from the list of four nominated agencies for white sugar imports, restricting the job to the three public sector trading firms — MMTC, PEC and STC.
Confirming the development, UKS Chauhan, managing director of Nafed said, “It was our request to the government to exclude us from the list, as the sale of white sugar to domestic mills became a little difficult.”
Nafed was encouraged earlier with its inclusion in the list and started making clients thereafter. Later, clients were not very keen on obtaining white sugar, perhaps because of squeezing margins. On Friday, not only Nafed, but other agencies are also not getting clients for selling white sugar, Chauhan said.
Nafed is currently importing pulses and edible oils on behalf of the government. These imports are then distributed through the public distribution system (PDS) by the government. Occasionally, it also imports other agricultural commodities.
According to commerce ministry sources, the decision to exclude Nafed from the list was taken in a meeting of the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) on May 4 as it felt that the federation would not be able to do the job properly.
The ministry sources say that Nafed could not add any quantity, since the government decided to allow public sector trading firms to import 1 million tonnes of white sugar at zero duty in February this year. While the remain three PSUs managed to import 50,000 tonnes since then.
However, Chauhan feels that Nafed is a capable agency and it can import white sugar if the government allows. Earlier, the four trading firms were asked to procure 250,000 tonnes of white sugar each. But, with Nafed out of the process, the quantity will be distributed equally among the remaining three agencies.
