Tamil Nadu Minister for Agriculture S. Damodaran was all praise for the transparent system of electronic bidding for produce introduced at the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) in Gulbarga on a pilot basis, and said his State would consider introducing a similar measure.
Mr. Damodaran, accompanied by senior officials of his department, including Agriculture Production Commissioner and department Secretary Sandeep Saxena, visited the APMC market yard here on Friday, along with Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) R. Ramaseshan, APMC chairman Mallikarjun Lingadalli and its secretary H.K. Chandramohan. They also inspected the grading of agricultural produce, particularly red gram, done by CommGrade, a subsidiary of NCDEX.
Briefed
The Tamil Nadu team was briefed by officials of NCDEX about electronic tendering of agricultural produce and how it meant a competitive price for farmers.
Officials of NCDEX and APMC told Mr. Damodaran and Mr. Saxena that e-bidding was totally transparent, eliminating the need for middlemen. Farmers had the choice of accepting the price offered during bidding or refusing it on the spot Only traders who had licences from APMC were allowed to participate in the bidding.
Besides, the officials said, APMC also carried out awareness programmes in villages to educate farmers on the need for maintaining the grading of the grain to get better prices in the market.
In a brief chat with presspersons, Mr. Damodaran and Mr. Saxena said that although they were impressed by the e-bidding process introduced at the APMC here, they would study the process further before taking a policy decision on introducing a similar system in Tamil Nadu.
The team was also visiting Mumbai, the NCDEX headquarters, to see the working of the NCDEX spot exchange of agricultural commodities.
