By TIOL News Service

ALLAHABAD, MAY 22, 2016: MR Ram Vilas Paswan, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has urged the States to exempt pulses from VAT and other local taxes. It may help cool the prices of the pulses by 5% to 7%. Briefing the media about the deliberations and decisions taken in the States Food and Consumer Affairs meeting held here yesterday, Mr Paswan said that State Food Minister’s conference noticed that, the prices of the specified food items like pulses, sugar, edible oil seeds commodity shoot up abnormally due to hoarding, profiteering and cartelling by traders and middlemen - without any benefit to the farmers. It was pointed out that the traders hoard the stock of a commodity in a bordering State where stock limits are not imposed. Therefore, there is a need that all States & UTs impose and implement stock. There should be a logical and scientific formula for stock limits separately in consuming states and surplus states limits and also for millers, producers and importers. So that supply chain mechanism remains smooth and pulses are available at reasonable prices

It was also recommended that importers of pulses should display stock position on public platforms such as portals of Ministry of Consumer Affairs or States Government portals to bring in more transparency about availability of stock. It was strongly felt that Government agencies should opt for long term supply contracts in place of tenders for time to time import of pulses for building up buffer stock.

Regarding the prices of sugar, Mr Paswan said that he has written to the chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu requesting them to keep a close watch on the release and stock held by sugar mills to ensure availability in the domestic market. He said that production linked export incentive scheme has been withdrawn midway to ensure adequate availability of the sugar in the domestic market. The states have been asked to implement stock limit effectively.

Mr Paswan said the government is effectively using Price Stabilization Fund for creating buffer stock of pulses and onions. So far about 50,000 MT Kharif and about 25,000 Rabi pulses have been procured and 26,000 MT contracted for import for buffer stock. Out of this 10,000 MT have allocated to the States. Requests from other States are awaited for further allocations.

He said that the Centre has further decided to strengthen price monitoring mechanism by including more markets for collecting price data. He said that State Governments have also been requested to set up price monitoring mechanism at their level also to take timely action to ensure availability.

Appreciating the efforts of State Governments for implementing National Food Security Act, Mr Paswan said now 72 crores people across 33 States/UTs have become eligible for wheat at Rs2/kg and rice at Rs 3/kg. He said now States should focus better targeting of food subsidy. He said End-to-End computerization of TPDS would certainly help in this venture. So far about 56% ration cards have been seeded with Aadhar cards against the total Aadhar coverage of about 83%. More than 1,15,909 FPSs are automated across the country by installing e-Point of Sale devices, and this count is likely to be increased to 3,06,526 FPSs by March, 2017. About 1.62 crore ineligible ration cards have been eliminated and food grains worth Rs. 10,000 crore have been better targeted.

Mr Paswan said decision was also taken to ensure online allocation of food grain up to FPS within two months in the States where it has yet to be done. So far it is being made in 25 States. States were also requested to expedite preparation for online procurement of food grains by their agencies. Farmers mobile numbers should be registered and their accounts numbers should be taken for direct deposit of system generated cheques. Remaining non-DCP States were requested to take up DCP operations as it would help in saving food subsidy, enhancing the efficiency of procurement and public distribution & encouraging local procurement to the maximum extent thereby extending the benefits of MSP to local farmers.