State to buy 90K MT of rice from open market as Centre revises allocation
KOLKATA: The state Food and Supplies department will require 90,000 metric tonnes of additional rice every month to provide food grains to 3.75 crore people under West Bengal Khadya Suraksha Yojana (RKSY I and RKSYII ) with the Centre revising its food grain allocation under PMGKAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) for May to September 2022.
"We need to purchase rice from the open market to provide the same in lieu of wheat for RKSY I and RKSY II
card holders. Separate tenders have been floated in every district for this purpose," state Food minister Rathin Ghosh said.
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. But the state allocates additional food grains to another 3.5 crore people under West Bengal Khadya Suraksha Yojana (RKSY I and RKSY II ).
The state used to purchase wheat from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) at around Rs 26 per kg for the RKSY beneficiaries. On the other hand, paddy was procured at Rs 33 per kg.
"So it is quite natural that with the state needing to procure 90,000 MT of additional paddy in lieu of wheat. The exact expenditure can be ascertained after the maturity of the tenders," the minister added.
The state has already revised its paddy procurement target to 55 lakh metric tonne from 49 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 the month of June through the ration shops. On May 4, the Centre had 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 during 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 jeopardized due to war, private parties have aggressively purchased wheat by paying higher price than minimum support price(MSP) and exported the same resulting in crisis.
The monthly allocation from the centre for Bengal will be 75,000 MT instead of 1.80 lakh MT while in case of rice it will be 2.25 lakh MT up from 1.20 lakh MT.
