Basu Govt, Mill-Owners To Meet Over Jute Purchases

The West Bengal government will soon convene a meeting with the managements of different jute mills in the state to discuss purchase of raw jute from the Jute Corporation of India (JCI).

There are 59 jute mills in the state, and the number of jute growers is around 26 lakhs.

At a recent meeting of the state cabinet, chief minister Jyoti Basu expressed the governments satisfaction over union governments decision to allow JCI to implement its minimum support price (MSP) operations to arrest the rapid fall in prices of raw jute in view of a bumper crop.

This year, the total production of raw jute in the country is expected to cross 10 million bales.The states production is nearly 64 lakh bales.

 

Biren Moitra, minister for agricultural marketing, said yesterday that the government had requested jute growers not to make distress sale of raw jute.

He added that JCI had agreed to purchase 1 million bales, and jute mill owners have been asked to lift stocks from it as directed by the Jute Commissioner.

The state government had already warned mill owners of firm action if they failed to lift stocks from JCI.

Finance minister Asim Dasgupta said that for implementing the MSP, the union government had announced a provision of Rs 140 crore for JCI.

The textile ministry had already released around Rs 20 crore to the organisation. Financial institutions had agreed to provide Rs 99 crore. JCI had already procured 2,00,000 bales from the rural markets in the state.

Meanwhile, a senior officer from the agricultural marketing department is being sent to Delhi to discuss with the union agricultural ministry a proposal for purchasing 1,00,000 tonnes of potatoes from the state by the centre.

On the other hand, the state government has planned to sell potatoes through the public distribution system (PDS) from the next week in view of a serious glut of the commodity.

As the project would be subsidised, the union government has agreed to meet fifty per cent of the total subsidy of Rs 2 crore.