Wastage of grains in FCI godowns is negligible: Ram Vilas Paswan

Food and consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan said that the government has reduced wastage of food grains to negligible by adopting scientific methods of storage and distribution.

“Unlike public perception that there is a huge wastage of food grains in Food Corporation of India’s godowns, we have been able to control it to negligible quantity,” Paswan said.

He said that the government follows ‘First In, First Out’ (FIFO) policy to increase the shelf life of food grains.


“We store grains in such a way that the grains arrived early is dispatched first making way for the new arrivals,” he said.

He said that government is to working on creating 10 million tones of steal silos for food grains storage which will bring the wastage to nil.

“In 2015-16, government bought 62.3 million tonne of rice and wheat. Out of which only 3116 tonnes of grains were wasted, which is just 0.005% of the total purchase,” he said.

Paswan said that in 2016-17, the wastage was just 0.014% of the total purchase of 61 million tonnes.

“Similarly, the wastage for 2017-18 and 2018-19 was 0.003% and 0.006% respectively. In 2019-20, government purchased 75.17 million tonnes of foodgrains, out of which only 1930 tonnes were wasted, which is 0.002% of the total procurement,” he said.