EGoM approves the draft Food Security Bill

12 Jul 2011 Evaluate

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on food chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on July 11, removed the ban on export of non basmati rice and approved the revised National Food Security Bill suggested by the food ministry and key recommendations made by National Advisory Council and Prime Minister Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC). However, the implementation of food security bill will take long time as it will be referred to state governments for their inputs before forwarding to the cabinet, then to parliament before sending to a parliamentary standing committee. The entire process is long and its implementation is likely to happen next year. A food ministry official said that we will be lucky if the process is cleared by December this year.

The EGoM also allowed export of 1 million tonne of non basmati rice conditionally from the open market. Each agency/trader is allowed to export an upper limit of 12500 tonnes at an MEP of $400/tonne. The Central stock would be tapped into only for very limited g-to-g exports to neighboring countries. However, the EGoM delayed its decision on exports of wheat, following disagreements over whether the private sector should be allowed to access subsidized wheat from the Central stocks but allowed limited 6.5lt of wheat product exports.  The ministry had asked for 3 million tonnes of wheat and non basmati rice.

The draft food security bill made by food ministry has recommend to cover 75% of rural poor and 50% of urban poor population, this recommendation will mean procurement of around 65 million tonne of foodgrains to service Public Distribution System (PDS), welfare programmes and bill itself. On the other hand, NAC had recommend to cover around 90% of the population to benefit both general and priority sector.

At that level procurement from the total marketable surplus of grains by the Centre would work out to slightly over 35%, itself considered high and possibly inflationary to a food subsidy bill of Rs 83,000 crore. The bill for implementing the NAC’s suggestions is pegged at an estimated Rs 1 lakh crore for an entire year. At present, the Centre buys around 29% of the total marketable grain surplus.

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