iGrain India - Regina. Food Corporation of India (FCI) has surplus stock of wheat and is also ready in principle to conduct its weekly e-auction under the Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS).
It is waiting for the green signal from the government for its permission. An official of the corporation says that FCI has informed the Department of Food and Public Distribution about its policy for the open market sale scheme and approval is awaited from there.
During the financial year 2023-24, a record sale of 94.10 lakh tonnes of wheat was done by the Food Corporation under OMSS,
due to which the price of this important food grain remained largely stable in the domestic division and the availability of its products also remained easy.
Apart from this, during the current year, the sale of wheat flour of some government agencies was also started at a fixed price. The price of Bharat Brand Wheat Flour was fixed at Rs 27.50 per kg. Retail sale of this flour is still going on.
During the last financial year, there was a huge increase in the sale of government wheat under OMSS because the price fixed for it was lower than the prevailing price in the open market.
As a result, millers / processors showed a lot of interest in its purchase. Now, due to the price of wheat again being higher than the government support price, millers / processors are demanding the government to start the OMSS scheme as soon as possible.
During the current year, 266 lakh tonnes of wheat was purchased by the Food Corporation, which was 4 lakh tonnes more than 262 lakh tonnes last year.
There was also a previous stock of about 75-76 lakh tonnes. On July 1, the corporation had a stock of more than 297 lakh tonnes of wheat.
Sale of some of this stock can be started. The price of mill quality wheat in the benchmark Indore Mandi was recorded at Rs 2640-2650 per quintal last day, which was much higher than the minimum support price.