Government to create buffer stock of pulses

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday decided to create a buffer stock of pulses in the country.

An official statement said the buffer stock would be created in the current year itself.

The statement said the CCEA also decided to import pulses, if needed, through a public sector enterprise of the commerce ministry.

"It approved procurement of about 50,000 tonnnes of pulses from the 2015-16 kharif crop and one lakh tonne out of the arrivals of rabi crop for 2015-16," the statement said.

Procurement of pulses will be done at market prices through Food Corporation of India, National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd., Small Farmers' Agribusiness Consortium and any other agency as may be decided.

SFAC will undertake procurement through Farmer Producer Organisations.

"The procurement in kharif and rabi 2015-16 will be done at market price above Minimum Support Price out of the Price Stabilisation Fund," the statement said.

"The decision to create a buffer stock of pulses to deal with wide fluctuation in prices is an important step for checking food inflation. This will also encourage farmers to take up pulse production on a larger scale and will enable India to help achieve self-sufficiency in pulses in a few years," the statement said.

"Pulses witness huge fluctuations in prices depending upon rainfall. It is necessary to create a buffer stock of pulses to reduce price fluctuations. This will also help in providing remunerative prices to farmers in times of excess production," it said.

It added that the agriculture ministry had identified gaps in the present strategy to increase production of pulses and identified lack of availability of new varieties of seeds as an important hindrance in increasing yield of pulses.