FCI expressed concern on Friday over the rising price of rice, stating that PDS rice is “extremely” good quality and advising traders to purchase the grain through the Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS) to increase domestic supply and limit price increases. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) raised the bid quantity to 2,000 tons per bidder from 1,000 tons on Friday, he added, and lowered the minimum bid quantity to 1 ton from 10 tons in an effort to lure more rice dealers and processors to participate in the OMSS.
The FCI Chairman and Managing Director briefed the media, saying, “The data on rice inflation is a little concerning. It is concerning because it is only at 13% year over year. We are selling rice under the OMSS for this reason. Despite heavy advertising of the OMSS scheme, he claimed, sales of rice have barely reached 1.19 lakh ton since June. 25 lakh tons of rice will be off taken by the government under the OMSS. For the first time, the FCI chief fed reporters fried rice and kheer (sweet rice) prepared from its godowns to allay concerns about the quality of PDS rice, which may have contributed to the low offtake.
The head of the FCI claims that increasing the amount of rice that private traders buy under the OMSS will increase its availability on the domestic market and drive down prices. The supply of rice is enough. The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) and other welfare programmes can use the entire 20 million tons of excess rice we now have, the speaker stated. In the 2023–24 kharif marketing season, almost 23.7 million tons of rice had been purchased, he continued. For wheat, the OMSS sale, in conjunction with other actions, has brought retail prices under control.
The amount of wheat sold under the OMSS since June is approximately 48.12 lakh tons. Furthermore, 86,084 tons of wheat have been sold to organizations such as Nafed, NCCF, and Kendriya Bhandar so far, with the intention of turning them into wheat flour and reselling it under the ‘Bharat atta’ brand for a discounted price of Rs 27.50 a kg. 101.5 lakh tons of wheat are available for sale by the government through March 2024 as part of the OMSS. The government has prohibited the export of wheat and a number of rice varieties since last year, in addition to the sales of wheat and rice under OMSS.
