Exempt stock holding limit: Dal importers to Centre

As government continued to conduct raids on pulse traders, they retaliated against the government to withdraw the authorised stock limit. However, the traders have threatened that if government fail to do so, they would stop importing dals from the importing countries --- Africa, Myanmar.

According to sources, a team of importers of pulses and beans who called on Finance Ministry Arun Jaitley on Friday, has sought exemption from stock holding limit imposed by the Centre to streamline the availability of the essential commodity in the open market. The demand of importers to exempt stock limit has been out rightly rejected by small traders. 

According to Jayesh Mehata, given that the members of importers team represent several multi-national companies, including Edelweiss, Mahindra, Tata, Reliance, Adani, etc, they should not be allowed to get out of stock limit ambit.

“If it happens, they will hold the stock for months and land the stocked pulses only after price escalation. The importers should be given some time limit of 30-45 days to land the essential commodity in the market,” said Mehta, who is president of Gujarat Dal Millers Association.

However, India Pulses and Grains Association has committed to the government that they will supply 100 MT of toor dal to government agency at a price of Rs 135 per kg, which will be available in the retail market at Rs 150-Rs 160. “There is a global shortage of pulses. The toor dal has almost been lifted from African countries --- Tanzania, Mozambique, etc, as all the MNCs in this business have already procured the lentils at lower rate and now they are busy in making moolah of the crisis,” said Mehta, who will be writing a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a day or two.

Agreeing with Mehta, Ramesh Chandra Lahoti, who heads Grain Merchants’ Association of Bengaluru, told Millennium Post that why importers should be given special bonhomie of stock limit exception as they are not in the trade for the public cause. 

“They are always in the price discovery mode and exploit the profit margin at best. The government really want to put a check on price of pulses, importers should be told to put their imported produce in the pipeline within 30-45 days and if they fail to do so, stern action should be taken,” Lahoti said. 

He further added that private players are importing pulses even more than the government’s proposed plan to import the lentils. “Vessels having 400 containers are landing at ports at the interval of a day or two and all the privately imported pulses are being pushed into the retail market. Given that we are small traders and we have limited stock, so there is question of hoarding by us as we don’t have such a huge storing capacity,” Lahoti said. It’s worth mentioning that one container has 24 tonnes of raw toor grains.

Meanwhile, Praveen Dongre, chairman of Mumbai-based Indian Pulses and Grains Association, said, “Pulses prices will come down only if there is smooth availability of imported dals. Therefore, pulses imports and importers should be exempted from the stock holding limit.” 

Stating that importers have already contracted 25 lakh tonnes of pulses for delivery till January and about 2.5 lakh tonnes are lying at ports, he said, “Any kind of restriction will dry the pipeline”.