With private sector/ traders offering better prices, pace of wheat procurement in the Government sector has so far been quite slow in Udhamsinghnagar this year as compared to the corresponding period previous year.
The matter of fact is that whereas different Government food procurement agencies had procured 92053.27 metric tone (mt) of wheat till May 14 last year, only 3344.50 mt of wheat has been collected by the same agencies from different parts of Udhamsinghnagar till May 14 this year as the figures provided by the officials concerned of Udhamsinghnagar suggest.
Out of the total 3344.50 mt of wheat collected till May 14 this year, 148.90 mt of wheat has been collected by the food and civil supply department, while the cooperative department has been able to procure 2838.05 mt of wheat and 357.55 mt of wheat by the Food Corporation of India (FCI), said Vipin Kumar, District Supply Officer (DSO) Udhamsinghnagar.
The interesting fact is that despite the observations of the officials concerned suggesting that the pace of wheat procurement will gather momentum in due course of time, the procurement of wheat has been considerably less this year as compared to the corresponding period last year.
For example, whereas 621.25 mt of wheat was collected by the Government agencies till April 15, 2013, the collection of wheat reached 2915.80 mt till May 2, 2013 and 3139.85 mt of wheat till May 6, 2013 and 3344.50 mt till May 14 this year.
Yet the overall collection of wheat is far behind this year compared to the previous year in the Government sector in Udhamsinghnagar district. Price factor seems to be one of the major factors leading to less procurement of wheat at the Government run wheat collection centres.
This year the minimum support price of wheat has been fixed by the Government at Rs1350 per quintal. But the local farmers here informed they are getting more than Rs1400 for per quintal of wheat in the open market.
That is why we would sell our produce to those who will offer better price, said Santhosh Arya, a local farmer.
As many as 145 wheat procurement centres have been set up in different parts of Udhamsinghnagar this year. Among others the State food supply department has set up eight food procurement centres, while the FCI has opened 14 wheat procurement centres and the cooperative department has opened as many as 96 centres.
Besides, as many as 27 wheat procurement centres have been set up by some other departments, said the officials concerned of the Udhamsinghnagar.