The Ministry of Agriculture on Thursday launched new features in electronic agriculture market platform (e-NAM), enabling direct trading from warehouses as well as collection centres of farmers producers organisations (FPOs) as part of its effort to decongest wholesale markets amid coronavirus threat.
"Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar launched two newfeatures of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) Platform to strengthenagriculture marketing by farmers which will reduce their need tophysically come to wholesale mandis for selling their harvestedproduce," an official statement said.
The features have been launched at the time when there is a criticalneed to decongest mandis to effectively fight against COVID-19, it added.The first one, warehouses-based trading modules in e-NAM software willfacilitate trade from warehouses as per the e-NWR (electronicnegotiable warehouse receipt).The other one is FPO trading module in e-NAM where by FPOs can tradetheir produce from their collection centre without bringing theproduce to APMC. "In addition to facilitate inter-mandi and inter-state trade at this juncture, enhanced version of the logistic module has been releasedwhereby aggregators of transport logistic platform have on boardedwhich helps users to avail trackable transport facilities fortransporting their produce," the statement said.
Speaking on the occasion, Tomar reiterated that e-NAM was launched on14 April 2016 as a pan India electronic trade portal linking APMCsacross the states.Already 585 mandis in 16 States and two Union Territories have been integrated on e-NAM portal.He also said the e-NAM will be soon expanded to cover an additional 415 mandis, which will take the total number of e-NAM mandis to 1,000. Tomar highlighted that the e-NAM provides for contactless remotebidding and mobile-based payment system.