93% wheat procured, Rs 7,594cr paid to farmers: Punjab top officer

Chandigarh: More than 93% of the total wheat which has arrived in mandis of Punjab has been procured so far and payments amounting to Rs 7,594 crore have been transferred to the bank accounts of 2.26 lakh farmers under the newly implemented direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme, according to the state’s top officer.
Chief secretary Vini Mahajan said 71.48 lakh metric tonne (LMT) of 76.32 LMT wheat arrivals had already been procured. She said the figure for the corresponding period last year was 29.32 LMT arrivals and 27.32 LMT procurement.
As many as 7 lakh of the total 10 lakh farmers have uploaded their documents on the DBT portal.
She said 22,000 arhtiyas (commission agents) were earlier registered with the food and civil supplies department and payments were transferred into their bank accounts for making further payments to farmers. This year, payments are being directly transferred by the procurement agencies into the bank accounts of farmers.
Principal secretary (food and civil supplies) K A P Sinha said there was no shortage of gunny bags in grain markets. He said there were initially some problems due to non-functioning of jute mills in Kolkata due to the ongoing assembly elections in the state.
He said 14.2 crore gunny bags had already been used for packaging of wheat, besides one crore bags per day were being supplied to all the grain markets across the state.