MIC Food & Civil Supplies holds Paddy procurement meeting with all agencies and rice mills at Sanskriti Mancha Burdwan on 26th November 2012

Paddy procurement operations for Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2012-13 will start from the end of November 2012 in all paddy producing blocks of Burdwan district.

• We have already identified Paddy Purchase Centres (PPCs), spread throughout the district, and also tagged rice mills with PPCs. PPCs for direct purchase to be run by State agencies in addition to PPCs in association with PACS/PAMS (Cooperative Societies).
• This year we plan to set up large number of Direct PPCs where farmers can offer Paddy at Rs 1250 per quintals for common paddy and Rs 1280 per quintal for fine paddy and get payments on the spot through account payee cheques. Banks were directed to open zero balance accounts to the farmers who applied and special awareness programmes cum facilitation camps were organised in all blocks in the last two months.
• State agencies, WBECSC, NAFED, NCCF and Benfed will set up the PPCs at the locations already suggested by MLAs/ identified by blocks and make arrangement for Paddy purchase directly from farmers at MSP. List of all such proposed PPCs already shared with block authorities and others.
• At present, district authority has ensured available vacant go down space of 23000 MT of total storage capacity of 1.04 Lakh MT under State Govt. in Burdwan district. Information on stock and space availability is updated daily on www.bardhaman.gov.in web portal for transparency. There are plans to collect daily sms report on paddy purchase from each rice mill and track information through sms based management system.
• All the dues of PACS/ Rice mills for previous years also cleared.
• All necessary steps to ensure smooth procurement operations are being taken and we seek cooperation of all stakeholders in the greater interest of farmers.

• Burdwan district plans to procure about 3.92 Lakhs MT rice in this year after successful operations last year when 3.36 Lakhs MT was procured. We could ensure purchase of 7 Lakhs MT Paddy from farmers under Levy and CMR procurement operations and expect that quantum may increase to 8 Lakhs MT Paddy this year.

To discuss the strategy and review the preparedness of all agencies, tagged rice mills etc, a meeting will be held at Sanskriti Lok Mancha Burdwan at 11 am. MIC Food & Civil Supplies has consented to preside over the deliberations.