BHUBANESWAR: Under attack from opposition parties over mandi issues, a delegation of BJD MPs met Union food minister Piyush Goyal in New Delhi on Monday to place demand for expediting paddy evacuation and to clear pending subsidy of Rs 5,600 crore to the state.
This is the second meeting of BJD MPs with the Union minister in the past two months over the issue of paddy procurement while BJD said the two issues also affect the procurement process in the state.
“Though there has been 19% growth in paddy procurement compared to the corresponding period in previous season, the state is saddled with two important problems like non release of pending subsidy and paddy evacuation by Food Corporation of India (FCI), which need attention of the Centre,” said BJD parliamentary party leader in Lok Sabha Pinaki Mishra.
A memorandum submitted by the BJD MPs to Goyal on procurement said the estimated surplus rice that needs to be evacuated by the FCI from Odisha in the current kharif marketing season would be around 30 lakh metric tonne (MT).
“Till March 13, FCI has evacuated only 6.65 lakh MT of rice. The movement plan for March has been reduced substantially. At this pace, the surplus 30 lakh MT of rice cannot be evacuated by the start of next KMS or till the start of next calendar year, which will hamper the ensuing Rabi procurement and next Kharif procurement,” said the memorandum.
If the surplus rice will not be evacuated, the state’s storage capacity of about 7.2 lakh MT will be overflowed while long storage of rice will lead to discolouration. Due to non-evacuation of surplus rice, the mills will come to a halt which will lead to break in cycle of lifting paddy from mandi to mill, said the memorandum.
The BJD MPs argued that loss of 1 lakh MT of rice due to deterioration of quality means a loss of about Rs 320 crore. If FCI lifts only 17 lakh MT of rice then 13 lakh rice will be left with the state, which will lead to loss to the tune of Rs 4160 crore.
The Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation Limited (OSCSC) procures paddy in the state through various agencies. The Centre through the Food Corporation of India (FCI) lifts the surplus rice from the state for the central public distribution system (PDS) pool and pays subsidy amount in advance.
On pending subsidy, the BJD MPs said non-release of subsidy by the Centre has forced OSCSC to go for loan burden of Rs 19,000 crore. Also, non-release of subsidy in time leads to huge interest burden on the OSCSC that has already suffered a cumulative loss of Rs 1721.16 crore.