Team News Riveting
Raipur, December 22
The Union Government has granted permission to enable Food Corporation of India (FCI) to lift 1.5 million tonne (MT) of parboiled rice in Chhattisgarh for the central pool.
Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai had written a letter to the Centre on December 21 urging to ask FCI to lift parboiled rice. “The Union Government immediately acted on the letter and granted the permission to take 1.5 MT of parboiled rice from Chhattisgarh to the central pool,” the state government spokesperson said. The development is seen as a major achievement of the Vishnu Deo Sai government that assumed office on December 13.
Sai said that the state had received the benefit of the double engine government. On behalf of the state, he has expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Food Minister Piyush Goyal.
The Chief Minister, in his letter, briefed Goyal about the situation of paddy procurement at support price and custom milling. He requested to increase the quota of rice procurement in the Central Pool from 6.1 MT to 7.4 MT and also to procure 5.9 MT of Arwa (raw rice) and 1.5 MT of Usna (parboiled rice) from the state.
The Chief Minister has said that in the Kharif marketing year 2023-24 in Chhattisgarh, as of December 20, 3.96 MT of paddy has been procured from 868,000 farmers at support price and more than 300,000 tonnes of paddy is arriving every day.
The state government has set a target to procure 13 MT of paddy from farmers at support price in the current kharif marketing season. After custom milling, 8.8 MT of rice will be produced. Of it, about 7.4 MT of rice will be procured in the central pool (5.8 MT in the Food Corporation of India and 1.6 MT in the Civil Supplies Corporation) besides 1.4 MT in the state pool.
