Paddy arrivals at the 1,976 Government procurement centres established in 27 district of Chhattisgarh stood at 46.53 lakh metric tonnes so far, officials stated.
The paddy procurement process had commenced on November 16, 2015 and will continue till January 31 this year.
Notably, Chhattisgarh is among five States in the country where the Union Ministry of Agriculture would provide financial assistance of `30 lakh per ‘mandi’ for installing software as well as unifying all mandis in the State under a common ‘e-market’ platform.
It has urged the State Governments to introduce e-market platform within the State to unify mandis so that farmers are free to sell in any of the mandis. Department of Agriculture under the Ministry of Agriculture will provide free software and help in its customisation for the States, officials stated.
In order to ensure free flow of Agricultural produce from one market area to another, save producers from multiple levies of mandi charges and to ensure agro commodities for consumer at reasonable prices, the Central Government has drawn a time bound programme for developing National Agriculture Market.
The Centre has earmarked Rs 175 crore to provide assistance of about `30 lakh per mandi for the software and it has already approved financial assistance for Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh.
The National e-platform developed for this purpose will cover 250 Agri mandis by September 2016 and by March 2018 a total of 585 mandis will have the system to ensure the farmers’ access for their produce across the markets.
The National Agriculture Market (NAM) would offer a common market places by providing real time prices on a national level to the participants of the Agri Produce eco- systems.