Chandigarh, October 29: The Government agencies and private millers have procured 7620555 metric tonnes of paddy in Punjab till October 27.
Giving details, an official spokesman of Punjab Government informed that out of the total procurement of 7620555 MT of paddy from various procurement centres in the state, the government agencies procured 7558016 MT of paddy while 62539 MT has been procured by the millers.
The spokesman said that PUNGRAIN had procured 2562966 tonnes, MARKFED procured 1774974 tonnes and PUNSUP procured 1522675 tonnes while Punjab State Warehousing Corporation and Punjab Agro Foodgrains Corporation procured 765549 and 790766 MT paddy respectively. The Centre Government agency FCI has procured 141086 MT paddy, he said.
The procurement started on October 1, though the bulk stocks started coming after October 10 in the state.
The State Government has already made payments of over Rs 9,075 crore to ‘arthiyas’ and farmers in their accounts.
Over 99 per cent of the procurement had been done by government agencies.
The Central Government had sanctioned a Cash Credit Limit (CCL) amount of Rs 29,695.40 crore for procurement of paddy in the kharif marketing season 2018-19, against a demand of Rs 40,300 crore raised by Punjab.
Punjab has made arrangements for a bumper procurement of 200 lakh tonne of paddy this season.
In 2017-18, a total of 179.34 lakh tonne of paddy was procured in the state.
Agrarian Punjab contributes 50 per cent of food grains (wheat and paddy) to the national kitty despite having just 1.54 per cent of the country’s geographical area.
Source Daily Pioneer
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