HAFED to get Rs 60 lakh more as milling charges

CHANDIGARH: The Haryana Cooperative Supply and Marketing Federation's (HAFED) new paddy milling system is paying rich dividend as it is likely to get Rs 60 lakh more as milling charges during the current kharif marketing season compared to what it got in the last kharif season.

Stating this here today, a spokesman of HAFED said that HAFED had 12 rice mills running on the private-public partnership mode.

He said that with a view to further streamline its rice milling activity and to create healthy competition and transparency in the system, HAFED adopted open bidding system to run its rice mills in association with private parties.

HAFED kept a floor bid price of Rs 13 per quintal for raw rice milling against uniform rate of Rs 12 per quintal of paddy received last year, he added.

He said that as a result of new system, HAFED was able to get bids ranging between Rs 13 to Rs 25 per quintal.

"A total of one lakh metric tonnes of paddy is expected to be milled in HAFED rice mills and it would yield an additional income of Rs 60 lakh for HAFED rice mills during the forthcoming paddy season", he said.

Capacity utilization of rice mills was about 60 per cent before the introduction of public-private partnership mode in 2004. Now it has gone to more than 100 per cent capacity.

Rest of the paddy purchased under Price Support Scheme was milled through private millers and rice was delivered to Food Corporation of India, he said.