470L farmers benefited from wheat, rice procurement by FCI in 3 yrs

Since 2018, 469.66 lakh farmers have benefitted from procurement of 1,164.68 lakh metric tonne (LMT) of wheat and 1,553.03 LMT rice by the Food Corporation of India (FCI), the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said.

A question was asked by Kesineni Srinivas, an MP from Vijayawada parliamentary constituency, about the procurement undertaken by FCI in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for the last three years. To this question, the Ministry said that since 2018, 160.06 LMT of paddy/rice was procured to Andhra Pradesh and 220.97 LMT to Telangana.

Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are DCP states wherein procurement is undertaken by the state government through its agencies, it added. In both the states, there is no wheat procurement and only paddy/rice is procured.

Underlining the total amount of debt on FCI, the Ministry said, "As on February 5, 2021, the total debt obligation of FCI was Rs 4,O7,4O4.77 crore in the form of cash credit limit, bonds, NSSF loans, ways and means advances, and short-term loans. Subsequently, it was addressed by the Government of India (GOI) with an allocation of Rs 4,62,789 crore."

"The entire outstanding NSSF loan was repaid and the arrear subsidy was brought to zero as on March 31, 2021. In the current financial year, FCI has received a subsidy of Rs 25,2OO crore till October and the current debt obligation of FCI as on October 31, 2021 is Rs 4,61,173 crore. The regular allotment under budgeted food subsidy is released to FCI by GOI from time-to-time," it added. -IANS