The State government has created a price stabilisation fund with a corpus of Rs.50 crore. Interest accrued on the corpus will be utilised to provide financial support to cooperative societies for procurement of commodities that are prone to violent price fluctuations and their sale, at cost price, to the public.
The order was issued by the State Cooperation, Food and Consumer Protection Department a few days ago. Two committees – Steering Committee and Implementation Committee – have been constituted for administering the fund.
While the Steering Committee will provide guidance on policy matters, the Implementation Committee will formulate an annual action plan, implement the fund scheme and operate it.
Headed by Cooperation, Food and Consumer Protection Secretary, the Steering Committee will comprise the Secretary (Expenditure) in the Finance Department, Registrar of Cooperative Societies (RCS), Commissioners of Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection, Agriculture, Horticulture and Agriculture Marketing besides a representative of the Domestic and Export Market Intelligence Cell in the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore.
The Implementation Committee, headed by the RCS, will have different additional registrars, Joint Registrar/Special Officer of the Triplicane Urban Cooperative Society, representatives of the Civil Supplies Corporation, Commissionerate of Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection and Directorate of Agricultural Marketing.
Initially, the fund would cover select commodities, as decided by the Steering Committee on the advice of the government or on the basis of market intelligence reports received from various agencies or the media.
The fund will be in force initially for three years. It will be reviewed after a year. The amount of Rs.50 crore will be kept in the special account of the Tamil Nadu State Apex Cooperative Bank.
