By IANS,
New Delhi : The government plans to create a two million tonne rice reserve on top of the 3 million tonne wheat emergency reserve created earlier this year to avoid any shortage, the agriculture minister said Friday.
“The stocks of primary commodities are at their highest level and procurement agencies have procured 22.5 million tonnes of wheat this year, which is more than double the procurement done last year,” Minister of Agriculture, Sharad Pawar said at a business meet.
He was speaking at a function organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).
“In the current rice-marketing season, over 274 lakh (27.4 million) tonnes of rice has been procured as compared to 249.66 lakh (24.9 million) tonnes by this time last year,” Pawar said.
Government has already started procurement of kharif crops with coarse cereals in Haryana.