Wheat exports unlikely: Thomas

Union Minister for Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affiars K V Thomas has indicated that India is unlikely to allow wheat exports this year. “Despite a bumper harvest and a buffer stock of wheat the government should refrain from allowing wheat as the country is gearing up for the historic Food Security Bill so we may be requiring huge quantities to be distributed to BPL families”, he said in a press conference here on Friday.

He added that an additional allocation of five million tonnes of grain for the public distribution has been approved by the cabinet only two days back, this would help to use the excess stock grain.

Thomas was in Punjab to monitor the wheat procurement going on this season and visited Mandis near Amritsar and silo in Moga.

He added the country was facing a shortage for grain storage and an additional storage capacity of 15 million tonnes would be created in three years. “The planning Commission of India has appointed a consultant to finalise the details for setting up silos for two million tonnes and the project would be executed on priority basis.”

He informed the electronic surveillance of the grain stock at the FCI warehouses was in the process and this would effectively check the leakages. This would also help in optimum utilisation of space with FCI as the computerised operations would help in tracing the update on availbility of space in warehouses.

He apprised that he has taken a serious note of the hinderance in the movement of foodgrains from producer to consuming states and his officials would coordinate with railways to solve the problem of availability of sufficient rakes.