Shobhna K Pattanayak mentioned this statement today, “The ongoing wheat sowing will not be affected due to duty-free import of the grain as the state-run FCI will procure it at MSP and protect farmers’ interest, Agriculture Secretary Shobhana K Pattanayak said today.
Last week news says that, the government had made a cut in the import duty to zero from earlier 15 per cent in order to boost up the supply from domestic sources and also control price hike.
The chief agency which is involved in distribution of food grains is Food Corporation of India (FCI).
Pattnayak also told PTI that, “The decision (to scrap wheat import duty) has been taken by the government taking into account the entire situation prevailing in the country. It will not impact sowing. It will not affect farmers as wheat is normally purchased by the FCI”.
The Food Ministry has assured that the farmers will be taken care of their interests. He said, “Whatever wheat is available, it will be procured by the FCI,” He also added that, ” FCI had procured about 23 million tonnes of wheat in 2015-16 and 28 million tonnes in the previous year”.
Further he told that earlier, the import duty was on zero level from 2006 to 2015. In the year, 2015, the duty was reimposed.
On this, general secretary of Hadauti Kisan Union said that, “Already farmers are doing cultivation of wheat in losses due to very high cost of cultivation. Insufficient Minimum Support Price, discontinuation of bonus and now duty-free what import will break their backbone”.
As per the reports, Kota holds major what production belt within whole Rajasthan. Here the crop was cultivated in the area of 5.36 lakh hectare. In the year 2015-16, it is also giving yielding results of 21.46 lakh metric tonne.
