Punjab wheat arrival may pick up from April 13

The arrival of wheat in different mandis of Punjab in the current procurement season is likely to pick up from April 13. According to an official, there is high moisture content in the crop and it is still not ripe for harvesting, so it will take a week more for start of heavy arrival in the mandis of the state.

According to the data, as on April 6, 46,000 tonnes of wheat arrived in different mandis of the state. Against the total arrival, procurement from Punjab by state agencies and FCI for the central pool remained at 31,000 million tonnes. Notably the total arrival of wheat in the corresponding last year stood at 210,000 million tonnes, while the total procurement was 145,000 million tonnes. So considering the data, the arrival and procurement is 78 per cent less than last year.

Ex-chairman market committee, Khanna, Harbans Singh Rosha said, “ There is high moisture content in the crop, so farmers are waiting for the crop for harvesting and we expect that it will pick by April 13, 2010. This is also one of the reasons, as the buyers are staying away from procurement presently.”

Officials in the food and supplies department said they were expecting total arrival during the current season in different mandis of the state to touch 11.5 mt as compared with 11 mt last year. He said FCI had been given target to procure 20 per cent of the total arrival, but expected it to procure 10-11 per cent of the total arrival and rest would be done by state agencies. He also said the participation of private traders in procurement process would be low this year also.

However, the cause of concern is huge backlog of 57 lakh tonnes of wheat which is still lying in different godowns of the state which need to be transported from the state for PDS. Officials in the food and supplies department informed that before the commencement of procurement season all the stocks were transferred out of states, so there was ample space for storage but in case of this year, huge inventories were there.