Rice millers allege delay in issue of support price

Rajahmundry: The issue of minimum support price (MSP) certificates to millers by the civil supplies department over the purchase of paddy from farmers turned out to be an issue between the two parties.

While the millers allege abnormal delay in the the process of issuing the certificates through online which affected the levy procurement supplies to FCI in the present season, the civil supplies authorities say that they opted for it to bring in transparency.

The government fixed a target of 12.23 lakh metric tonnes for 2013-14 procurement season for East Godavari. Of this total, 10.17 lakh mt is raw rice and the remaining 2.06 lakh mt is boiled rice. In addition, the procedure of 75 per cent of rice as levy and the remaining 25 per cent sale in the open market by millers is being continued in the present season as there was speculation of reversal of this process earlier.

The millers allege that because of switching on to the mode of MSP certificates by authorities from the manual process to online mode, it has been causing immense delay in the levy rice supplies to the FCI as it is mandatory to produce this certificate. Only on producing the certificate issued by the civil supplies authorities the FCI accepts the stocks and makes the payment, the millers said.

The East Godavari Rice Industry Association president and former  state association president Dwarampudi Bhaskara Reddy on Monday said that because of this abnormal delay in the process of issuing the certificates, discontinuing the manual process, the rice supplies by them to the FCI slowed down to a considerable extent. “In the present season, so far we could supply 2,000 mt as levy as against 40,000 mt in the previous season of 2012-13. In addition to this, the FCI is accepting rice five days in a week from Monday to Friday only.

“They are quoting technical reasons for non-acceptance of the stocks on the remaining two days. This too has put in a lot of extra expenditure on the millers in the form of warfage (demmarage) to trucks towards waiting charges for unloading,” he said.

When contacted on the issue, the district supply officer, Vemuri Ravi Kiran, said that they opted for the online process to bring in transparency to the entire activity.