The Union Government has agreed to buy 40.20 lakh tonnes of rice from the rabi season, from Telangana. What the Centre is buying is the raw rice or fortified rice and not parboiled rice, which the State has been selling for over 40 years.
Though it is less than about 46 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice that the Centre government procured from the State, the bottom line is that it is going to buy the produce, ending weeks of speculation on whether it would buy it or not. The Centre has made it clear several times that it has no problem in procuring the non-parboiled rice from the State.
The State government has taken a decision to buy the raw rice from farmers after weeks of verbal duel with the Union government over procurement of parboiled rice. Telangana government wrote a letter to the Union Government, informing its decision to sell raw rice.
The Union Government agreed to buy parboiled rice from the State last year after taking a written undertaking that it won’t offer to sell parboiled rice in the future. It argued that the country had enough stocks of parboiled rice to meet the demand for the next 3-4 years.
