Another year of dal crisis looms, government takes stock

NEW DELHI: Preparing to tide over another year of shortage in availability of pulses, particularly arhar dal that triggered a crisis, private importers have informed government of their intention to import nearly 5.5 million tonnes (MTs) of pulses next year in comparison to about 4.5 MTs in 2015.

Government will also increase the import besides carrying out direct procurement from farmers to create a stock.

Sources said private importers shared their preparedness with government at a meeting held in commerce ministry on Wednesday.

India is the largest importer of the commodity across the world, because of deficient production of pulses in the country.

The demand supply gap has been between 3 MTs and 5 MTs.

The trend is likely to be similar in 2015-16 as domestic production may increase marginally.

Traders have been maintaining that the crisis was more acute this year, particularly in the case of arhar, as the availability in international market was also less and there was hardly any hoarding. However, officials did not buy this since prices of all pulses increased significantly including of chana dal and masoor. "The prices started shooting simultaneously. So, to prevent such a situation again, we have to import to create some stock and fix the stock limits," said a top government official.

Sources said that government has to prepare for shortage of arhar considering the fact that India produces 80 per cent of arhar globally. While the demand was about 35 lakh tonnes in 2015, domestic production was only 20 lakh tonnes and around 3.5 lakh tonnes was imported by private players. Next year the domestic production is likely to increase marginally to 21 lakh tonnes and import would be around 4.5 lakh tonnes against this year's 3.5 lakh tonnes.

According to industry projects there will still be about 9.5 lakh tonnes shortage. In that case government may have to reach out to people, inform them and also impress upon them to shift to other pulses rather than consume more arhar.