Wheat demurrage to be resolved soon

The Union food ministry will resolve the issue of demurrage, plaguing the international trading companies exporting wheat to India, next week.

"The issue of demurrage payment to the affected exporting parties, where the delay happened from our side, would be resolved after scrutinising the claims.

"The State Trading Corporation (STC), the agency that imported wheat, brought the issue to our notice only recently and we will resolve it in a meeting next week", said the union food secretary T Nanda Kumar.

"The collective demurrage charges incurred by the exporting parties amount to about Rs 70 crore", said an executive of an international company that sold wheat to India last year.

International companies such as Concordia, Glencore, Cargill and AWB among others sold 5.5 million tonnes wheat to India.

As the sowing season was in full swing, the unloading of fertiliser shipments was given priority over the wheat shipments. Moreover, the ports were clogged.

This resulted in a delay and the companies, whose shipments were thus affected, had to incur demurrage charges.