Civil Supplies Dept’s Debt Burden Has Reduced in Last Three Months: Official

Hyderabad: That the civil supplies department is changing for the better gets evidenced by the fact that it has managed to reduce its loan burden by Rs 3,214.31 crore in the last three months. Further with the corporation set to earn up to Rs 7,000 crore from the auction of rice, the burden would be reduced by Rs 10,000 crore leading to a lessening of the interest burden by around Rs 800 crore per year.

It may be recalled that the department’s loans had shot up to Rs 58,623.08 crore as of January 1. The fall in loan burden to Rs 55,408.77 crore as of February 22, has reduced the interest payable per month from Rs 276.09 crore (Jan. 1) to Rs 260.95 crore.

There has been a nine-time increase in diverted rice that has been seized, from 733 quintals last year to 7,629.60 quintals in the last three months. This has led to the confiscation of 45 vehicles valued at Rs 7.51 crore. The exercise has resulted in a record delivery of eight lakh metric tonnes by millers to the corporation in January alone.

Global tenders during the previous auction had yielded Rs 16,846. 73 per quintal last year but the current round has swelled it to Rs 20,037.76 crore. “This is an increase of Rs 3,191.03 per quintal. Earlier millers used to keep fine rice milled during the kharif season and give back coarse rice belonging to the rabi season by seeking umpteen extensions. The millers also tended to give rice to the corporation instead of FCI as the quality parameters of the latter were stringent. We are also insisting on quality now and are breaking the crop rollover cycle from one season to another,” said D.S. Chauhan, principal secretary (civil supplies).

“A committee of five IAS officers was constituted and everything was done in a transparent manner. By imposing conditions like insisting on having a local office and a trade turnover of Rs 200 crore over the last three years in commodity trading, we kept the millers away. This will also ease storage space”, he informed.

The Mahalakshmi scheme, under which 40 lakh beneficiaries have been identified for availing LPG gas at Rs 500 per cylinder, is slated to be launched on Tuesday. Consumers with shortcomings in their ration card, domestic gas connection, and Aadhaar card, which all are mandatory, will be given another chance to avail of the benefit after making due amends, the official said.

The number of cylinders a family is eligible for has been pegged to the average use in the last three years.