Millers told to declare rice stocks every week.

By Sandip Das

To prevent a spike in rice prices and prevent speculation, the food ministry on Friday asked the traders, wholesalers, retailers, big chain retailers and milers across the states to declare stock positions within a week.

The ministry has requested the rice traders and processors to declare the stock position of grain in terms of broken, non-basmati, parboiled, basmati and paddy categories on the on its portal from next Friday.

Stating that the retail prices of rice have increased by 14.51% over the past year, a ministry statement said “the domestic prices of rice are increasing despite a good crop this kharif, ample stocks with Food Corporation of India (FCI) and in the pipeline and various regulations in place on rice exports”.

The food ministry also announced selling of rice through retail outlets at subsidised rate of Rs 29/kg under the Bharat rice initiative. The subsidised rice will be available to consumers through retail outlets in 5 kg and 10 kg pack with farmers’ cooperative Nafed, National Consumers’ Federation of India (NCCF) and Kendriya Bhandars and through e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart and Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

In the first phase, 0.5 million tonne (MT) of rice has been allocated for retail sale under ‘Bharat Rice’ “Hopefully the move would send a signal to the unscrupulous traders who are holding onto the rice stocks for no reason and will release the stock in the market,” Sanjeev Chopra, secretary, department of food and public distribution said at a briefing. He said through targeted retail interventions rice prices would be brought down.

At present, the government is selling chana dal and atta (flour) at subsidised rate of Rs 60/kg and Rs 27.5/kg through farmers’ cooperative Nafed and NCCF and Kendriya Bhandars stores under Bharat Dal and Bharat Atta initiatives. Retail inflation in rice has been in double digit since October 2022 and rice price rose by 12.33% in December, 2023 on year.

There has been a lukewarm response to open market sale of surplus rice to bulk buyers by the FCI at subsidised rate of Rs 2900/quintal, below the economic cost of grain for 2022-23 at Rs 3,537/quintal. Since July, 2023 FCI could sell only 0.16 MT of rice through weekly e-auctions so far against an allocation of 5 MT for the current year.

The government has banned exports of white rice and imposed 20% export duties on par-boiled rice last year to improve domestic supplies. Currently, FCI holds 19.54 MT of rice stocks, excluding 37 MT receivable from millers. The rice stock is against the buffer of 7.61 MT for January

Last year, the government had banned non-basmati white rice exports, however shipment of rice for meeting the food security needs of developing countries was allowed. It also imposed 20% export duties on par-boiled rice to improve domestic supplies.

In the 2022-23 crop year (July-June), rice production was estimated at record 135.75 MT. In the first advance estimate of foodgrain production for crop year 2023-24, rice output for Kharif crop out put is projected 106.3 MT, marginally higher than last year. Kharif crops account for more than 80% of total rice output.

This article has been republished from The Financial Express.