Uniform paddy MSP for all states not acceptable: Odisha government

Sahoo said the State Government has been demanding higher MSP for paddy as the cost of production is higher in the State as compared to the average production cost decided by the Centre.

Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment Minister Arun Sahoo (Photo| Facebook/ Arun Sahoo)

BHUBANESWAR: Even as the BJP claimed that minimum support price hike of Rs 65 per quintal of paddy for the 2019-20 Kharif marketing season will be a major boost to the farmers’ income, the State Government said an uniform price hike for all States is not acceptable.

“The Centre should have adopted different yardsticks for different states while fixing the minimum support price for food grains especially paddy taking the actual production cost into consideration. The ‘one size fits all’ policy is not practical due geographical dissimilarities,” remarked Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment Minister Arun Sahoo.

Sahoo said the State Government has been demanding higher MSP for paddy as the cost of production is higher in the State as compared to the average production cost decided by the Centre. The all-party resolution in the Assembly in 2017 on paddy MSP had urged the Centre to fix the price at Rs 2,930 per quintal while calculating the cost of production at Rs 2,344 per quintal.

Dubbing the Wednesday decision of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “great betrayal”, senior Congress leader Narasingh Mishra said he strongly disapproved the nominal hike of Rs 65 per quintal. “I disapprove the MSP hike for paddy and condemned the anti-farmers policy of the Narendra Modi government at Centre,” Mishra said.

He said the Prime Minister has once again betrayed the farmers of the State. “We had proposed the MSP at Rs 3,516 per quintal as the Prime Minister promised to provide 1.5 times more than the actual cost of production of the crop. However, the House resolved to demand MSP at Rs 2,930 per quintal paddy stating that it was an acceptable figure,” Mishra told TNIE.

While the Centre decided the cost of production of paddy at Rs 1,208 per quintal for 2019-20 Kharif marketing season, the official estimate of the State was Rs 2,344 per quintal. With increased input cost including labour, the revised production cost may be more this year.

Even at the old rate, the farmers of the state are losing Rs 529 per quintal, Mishra argued. He came down heavily on the muted response of the State Government which had made it a political issue and had staged a demonstration in New Delhi to highlight the problems of the farmers. The MSP has been increased from Rs 1,750 per quintal to Rs 1,815 per quintal.