Centre brings wheat and rice under pricestabilization fund
New Delhi: The government has approved inclusion of wheat and rice under its price stabilization fund (PSF) after it started selling Bharat atta and rice as part of its retail intervention in a bid to tame inflation as prices are soaring ahead of general elections, a government official said. The fund is used to build up India’s buffer stock of key food commodities and strategically release these in the market when
prices rise. So far, only onions, potatoes and pulses have been part of the PSF. The new step will see the government give a payout to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for supplying Bharat atta and rice to
the central procurement agencies National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (Nafed) and National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India (NCCF).
The FCI will get a subsidy of ₹435 for a quintal of wheat and ₹200 per quintal of rice supplied to Nafed and NCCF for processing these and then selling under the Bharat brand. The government already sells Bharat atta (flour) and rice at a subsidized price of ₹27.50 and ₹29 a kg. However, sales of the
Bharat brand have been tepid. “Inclusion of wheat and rice as PSF commodity will enable
subsidy payment from the open market sale scheme operations for wheat and rice,”the official cited above said. “Inclusion of rice as one of the commodities for PSF operations was done last September, while wheat has been added recently. The inclusion of wheat means a subsidy of around ₹326 crore,
which has been approved by the concerned authorities and will be given to FCI from PSF,”the official said.
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