BHUBANESWAR: Even as the State Government claims to have procured 65.49 lakh tonne of paddy during the 2018-19 Kharif marketing season, there is a complete mismatch between the official data produced by two of its departments on the marketable surplus of paddy.
While the Government informed the Assembly in July that 65.49 lakh tonne of paddy was procured from registered farmers, a progress report of the Cooperation department said 42.29 lakh tonne of paddy was purchased from farmers under the minimum support price (MSP) scheme by Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) by end of June this year.
Other than PACS, which procured paddy on behalf of Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation (OSCSC), agencies like Tribal Development Cooperative Corporation (TDCC), Women Self Help Groups (WSHGs) and Pani Panchayats were also engaged in the procurement process.
In the absence of procurement figures of these agencies, it is construed that the balance 23.20 lakh tonne of paddy was purchased by them under price support system from the farmers. What is intriguing is that it is unclear whether these agencies have the capacity to purchase such huge quantity of paddy without having any infrastructural facility of their own.
The TDCC, which has been participating in the decentralised procurement from 2006-07, procured 44,721 tonne of rice in 2015-16 which is equivalent to about 65,000 tonnes of paddy. But the corporation procured 9,850 tonnes of rice in 2017-18. It is anyone’s guess if the SHGs and the Pani Panchayats have the capacity to procure over 22 lakh tonne of paddy.
While replying to a question from Congress legislator Tara Prasad Bahinipati during the budget session of the Assembly, Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister RP Swain informed the House that the State’s rice production was 76.19 lakh tonne against its requirement of 68.31 lakh tonne. In effect, the State has a marketable surplus of 7.88 lakh tonne of rice this year.
Another report of the Government said the State has a total rice production of 73.11 lakh tonne while the requirement is 67.98 lakh tonne. In this scenario, the marketable surplus comes to 5.13 lakh tonne.