Buoyed over the successful market intervention of procurement through the SHGs of women by the Civil Supplies Department, the State government on Friday launched an ambitious programme for procurement of paddy and rice through a decentralised system.
Earlier, the paddy procured by the State government was sent to the rice mills and the rice stored in the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns and later supplied to the public distribution system (PDS) shops.
Ration card-holders
Now, the A.P.Civil Supplies Corporation will procure paddy directly from farmers, to meet the needs of the Public Distribution System (PDS) to white ration card-holders and social welfare hostels.
The programme was formally launched at the State Warehousing Corporation godown in Jammikunta on Friday by Minister for Civil Supplies D.Sridhar Babu along with Government Whip Arepalli Mohan, Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabhakar, Husnabad MLA A. Praveen Reddy, AP Civil Supplies Corporation Managing Director D. Varaprasad, Food Corporation of India General Manager Kalyan Chakravarthy and others.
Mr. Sridhar Babu said that the State requires about 40 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of rice per annum for the PDS scheme. In order to achieve self reliance and economise on transport and godown space, they have decided to procure the required quantity of 40 lakh MT of rice from the farmers directly and distribute to the consumers.
In the first phase, they had chalked out plans to procure about 11 lakh metric tonnes of rice worth Rs.2,530 crore from the seven districts where the decentralised procurement of rice would be launched.
Area-wise statistics
In Karimnagar district, about 2 lakh metric tonnes of rice would be procured and sent to the PDS locally.
Similarly, about 1.7 lakh MT rice would be procured in Nalgonda, 2.69 lakh MT in Guntur, 1.8 lakh MT in Warangal, 40,000 MT rice in Prakasham, 2.3 lakh MT in Nellore and 20,000 MT in Chittoor during this season.
