Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Agriculture Minister recommending to let sell groundnuts stored in the state at lower price to local oil millers. As much as 9.50 lakh tonne groundnuts purchased from Gujarat farmers at minimum support price (MSP) is stored at different warehouses in the state and fearing the rotting, the government now wishes to dispose the stock at the earliest.
The central government, through NAFED, had purchased 8.30 lakh MT groundnut from farmers in the current year while a stock of 1.20 lakh MT of last year was still stocked in warehouses. The CM had called a meeting of representatives of NAFED and cooperative bodies such as GUJCOMASOL (Gujarat Cooperative Marketing Society Limited) to find a solution.
The chairman of GUJCOMASOL and former agriculture minister in state Dilip Sanghani said, "The Saurashtra Oil Millers Association (SOMA) in Rajkot have been saying that they are ready to purchase groundnuts at Rs 2,500 to Rs 2,800 per MT, while the market rate is Rs 3,200. The centre is not ready to sell groundnuts at lower rates and bear the loss. CM Rupani was of the opinion that the groundnuts should be sent to local oil millers so that the production of oil starts, while rotting is also prevented. This will make edible oil available in the market at lower rates, too."
"We have also presented the proposition that GUJCOMASOL would purchase the groundnuts at the rates proportionate to market rates of groundnut oil and we would charge only 1 per cent extra. We are of the opinion that the oil can be made available to poor people at lower rates and the centre can give subsidy of Rs 5 per kg to them," Sanghani added.
Sanghani also added that the centre should dispose the groundnut soon, otherwise it may rot and would be of no use, and the centre would incur a huge loss. He also suggested that it is better to bear reasonable loss by selling groundnuts at lower rates.
Meanwhile, Gujarat agriculture minister RC Faldu also wrote to union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh that their agency NAFED failed to take care of the stock of groundnuts purchased from farmers. He wrote that NAFED should have appointed staff for monitoring the quality of groundnuts during purchase, weighing, sealing, transportation and storing. He also wrote to Singh that the private warehouses did not make security arrangements for the storage. Recently, three incidents were reported in Gujarat where lakhs of tonnes of groundnuts were gutted under mysterious circumstances.
