Bhubaneswar: Poor people in the country will get additional 2 kg rice/wheat and 1 kg sugar soon.
The Central government is considering a proposal to supply 2 kg rice/wheat to the 80 crore National Food Security Act(NFSA) beneficiaries in addition to their present entitlement of 5 kg rice/wheat at least for six months. It is also considering a proposal to supply 1 kg sugar to the non-Antyodaya Anna Yojana beneficiaries at a subsidised rate of Rs 13.50/kg
The union minister for food and consumer welfare, Ram Vilash Paswan, has given a suggestion to the government to provide additional rice/ wheat the NFSA beneficiaries so as to reduce the food stock burden which has overshoot the limit of the buffer stock. Paswan has also given a proposal to provide sugar at subsidised rate to those not covered under Antyodaya Anna Yojana.
The food ministry is planning to offload about 8-9 million tonnes (mt) of food grains from the surplus stock by supplying the additional rice/wheat to the NFSA beneficiaries. This would have an addition financial burden of Rs 25,000 crore on the exchequer.
Currently, under the NFSA, over 80 crore people get 5kg of rice/wheat every month at highly subsidised rate of Rs 2-3/kg. In Odisha the state government is supplying rice at a further subsidised rate of Rs 1/kg to 3.23 crore people (86.83 lakh families) out of the 4.20 crore people of the state as per 2011 Census.
Food Corporation of India (FCI) and other agencies currently hold extra stocks, over and above the bugger required) in most parts of the year. These agencies among them were holding excess food grain stocks worth Rs1.18 lakh crore as in April1, 2019, in the central pool
The ministry is also proposing to supply one kg sugar at a subsidised rate of Rs 13.50 per kg to an additional 16.3 crore families. This will cost the exchequer Rs 4,727 crore. Currently sugar is supplied to 2.5 crore families under Antyodaya Anna Yojana at a subsidised rate of Rs 13.50 per kg.
