Kendriya Bhandar to sell imported tur dal from October 15

In an attempt to improve availability and check rising prices of pulses in the national capital, Kendriya Bhandar will start selling imported tur dal at its 100 locations from October 15.

The sale of the commodity at Mother Dairy's 300 Safal outlets will begin from this weekend.

State-owned MMTC has floated a fresh tender for import of 2,000 tonnes of tur dal, to be delivered by next month, to further improve supply of pulses in the country.

These decisions were informed at a meeting of an inter-ministerial committee, headed by consumer affairs secretary C. Vishwanath, held here on Monday.

"Regarding tur dal, Kendriya Bhandar informed that all arrangements have been made to make imported dal available in its outlets in Delhi from October 15. Safal will also sell the dal through its outlets by this weekend," the food ministry said in a statement.

"It (the bid) will open on October 16, 2015. The successful bidder will have to ensure delivery of Tur at Indian ports by November, 2015," it added.

According to statement, MMTC has contracted to import 5,000 tonnes of tur dal, out of which 3,250 tonnes have landed at Chennai and Mumbai ports. The remaining stock will arrive soon. The public sector firm has separately contracted to import 5,000 tonnes of urad.

The committee was also of the view that an independent expert agency dealing with commodities may also be involved in forecasting the availability and demand of the essential food commodities both at domestic as well as international level.

"This would facilitate to plan effective market intervention, well in advance, by the concerned government agencies," the statement said.

"During 2013-14, pulses worth $1.9 billion were imported. In the following year, the import bill on account of pulses was $2.6 billion showing an increase of 36.8 percent on year over year basis.

In the April-June period of the current fiscal, the country has already imported pulses worth $0.66 billion," said a study on pulses by industry body Assocham in September.