State revises procurement of paddy from 49 metric tonnes to 55 MT
kolkata: The state Food and Supplies department has revised its paddy procurement target to 55 lakh metric tonnes (MT) from 49 lakh MT with the Centre revising its food grain allocation under PMGKAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) for May to September 2022.
The Centre is allocating 1 kg 250 gm wheat for each beneficiary per month instead of 3 kg while to fill the gap, rice allocation is 3 kg 750 gm up from 2 kg under PMGKAY.
There are 5.5 crore beneficiaries in the state under PMGKAY. The state allocates additional food grains to another 3.5 crore people under West Bengal Khadya Suraksha Yojana (RKSY I and RKSYII ).
"It is quite natural that we will be needing more rice to compensate for the gap of wheat. So our paddy procurement target that was 49 lakh MT has been revised to 55 lakh MT," an official in the state Food and Supplies department said.
The state has already procured nearly 42 lakh MT. Procurement started in December 2021 and will continue till August 2022.The PMGKAY beneficiaries will receive 3 kg 750 gm rice and 1 kg 250 gm wheat from June through the ration shops. The Food department officials are not ruling
out cutting down the allocation for wheat also for the RKSY cardholders owing to dwindling wheat stock.On May 4, the Centre lowered its
wheat production estimates by 5.7 per cent to 105 million tonnes (MT) from the projected 111.32 MT for the crop year ending June. The production fall was attributed to unusually warm weather conditions that persisted from March to April in most parts of the key grain-producing States of Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh as well as Uttar Pradesh.
However, sources in the state government said that with wheat supply from Ukraine, a major supplier, getting jeopardised due to the war, private parties have aggressively purchased wheat by paying a higher price than the minimum support price (MSP) and exported the same resulting in the crisis.
The monthly allocation from the Centre for Bengal will be 75,000 MT instead of 1.80 lakh MT while in the case of rice it will be 2.25 lakh MT up from 1.20 lakh MT.
