Centre sets rice procurement target at 46.34 mt for 2025-26 season
India set a 46.34 million tonne rice procurement target for 2025-26, 4.45 percent lower than last year’s goal, though 2024-25 procurement reached 51.5 million tonnes. Officials also fixed a 1.91 million tonne millet target, reviewed digital monitoring initiatives, and introduced a rice milling scheme limiting custom-milled rice to 10 percent broken grains to boost quality.
The Centre has fixed a target of procuring 46.34 million tonnes of rice in the 2025-26 procurement season, which will begin in October.
This is 4.45 per cent lower than the 48.5 million tonnes target fixed for the 2024-25 season. Against that target, actual rice procurement till August this year has been about 51.5 million tonnes, 5.8 per cent higher than what was envisaged at the start of the season.
The rice procurement target was finalised at an all-India conference of food secretaries of states and Union Territories with the Union Food Ministry.
Senior officials from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) also participated in the meeting. A target to purchase 1.91 million tonnes of millets was also set to encourage farmers to diversify their production basket.
An official statement said the meeting also reviewed several ongoing initiatives of the Food Department, including web-based processing of requests for milling periods, mobile app-based joint physical verification of paddy, Smart PDS, Anna Mitra, implementation of the Cash Credit Limit for purchase of jute bags, and Depot Darpan.
Details on the rice milling transformation scheme were also shared, under which custom milling of rice with only 10 per cent broken is to be undertaken.
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Source : Business Standard
