Food Ministry to soon take a call on FCI restructuring

NEW DELHI: A decision on restructuring the Food Corporation of India will be taken soon. Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said this on February 11 following a meeting to review the recommendation of a high-level committee on the issue.

“Today, we held meeting with the FCI officials, the agriculture and the fertilizers minister. We will continue this meeting tomorrow as well,” he said. A number of recommendations would be implemented by FCI alone, others by the department of food and public distribution and the rest by the various ministries from agriculture to fertilizers. Officials in the food ministry said agriculture officials discussed about relooking and fixing the minimum support price (MSP), which currently covers 23 commodities or just covers pulses and oilseeds under MSP.

Agriculture ministry officials suggested FCI should start procuring pulses and oilseeds. However, FCI in its response said they were not a part of the public distribution schemes and we have agencies like Nafed to procure other commodities,” said the official.

The FCI suggested various thoughts and discussed procurement and quality control, said the official. “We wanted to know what the FCI officials feel about the recommendations and how they are planning to implement it,” said the official. He added Paswan had asked FCI to give the implementation schedule of setting up silos in the country. The FCI has called for a meeting of its officials in New Delhi on February 17, to chalk out means to support procurement in backward states. Ministry officials said the chemical and fertilisers ministry is yet to submit its views on giving direct subsidy to farmers.