As the Centre looks to expand the electronic trading platform of e-NaM in more states, a high powered panel of experts on integrating commodity spot and futures markets has found that data for trading done manually are being fed into the electronic platform of E-NaM after the auction is completed at many mandis (APMCs).
This is in complete violation of the concept of transparency and discovery of fair price.
“At such APMCs, strictly speaking, an online auction of commodities on eNAM platform is not taking place and the data of manual trading is being recorded into the system after the auction is done offline,” the panel said listing out the operational limitations and challenges of e-NaM. It was chaired by Niti Aayog member Ramesh Chand.
The panel was set up by the finance ministry a year before. The panel submitted its report in February.
The report has been considered by the Union finance ministry's department of economic affairs and is now in the public domain for comment.
The panel said the details being fed manually into the e-auction platform included details about buyer, seller, seller’s address, commodity name, quantity and auction rate, etc.
That apart, the panel found that many agricultural produce market committees (APMCs) are lacking in the operational assaying lab for grading of the commodities prior to putting them for online auction.
“Though some of the labs do have some basic instruments like moisture meter and weighing machine etc., this is a major deficiency noticed in the majority of APMCs thereby affecting the prospect of introducing online trading platform in such APMCs,” the panel’s report said.
APMCs need to be well equipped with the basic assaying equipment’s including automatic analyzers for both physical as well as chemical quality, it said.
Also, few mandis were pushing out commodities with large arrival volumes from e-auction due to time constraint.
The panel also found significant variation in the arrival data of AGMARKNET and eNAM. This is so because AGMARKNET data records actual transaction data, while eNAM records the data captured at the arrival gate of the APMC.
E-NaM is one of the pet-projects of the Narendra Modi government under which it plans to integrate 585 markets through the national electronic platform March 31, 2018. Till December 2017, around 470 markets were integrated with the e-NAM platform.
Till few months back, a total of 16.69 million tonnes were traded through the platform valued at Rs 422.65 billion.
Meanwhile, the panel also said that in order to operate the eNAM at its full potential and to pass on the intended benefit to the farmers, the government should ensure that each e-NaM or APMC must have appropriate storage facility to provide cost-effective warehousing facilities to the sellers (farmers) so as to avert distress sale, there should be prompt payment to farmers.
Thirdly, a buyer irrespective of his location should participate in any market of his choice and an institution to support inter-mandi trade and movement of produce, including dispute resolution mechanism should be established.
“Auctions of the produce should take place simultaneously on one common electronic platform in all APMC markets in the country, as well as in the private markets, as and when they come to be established,” the panel’s report said. EoM