Govt approves additional wheat for bulk consumers under OMSS

With the government approving tender for close to 3 lakh tonne of wheat under the Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS) for bulk consumers last week, the scarcity of supplies for the flour millers has eased to a large extent.

Under OMSS, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has released more than 1.4 million tonne of wheat till now from its reserves during the current fiscal.

An EGoM had sanctioned release of three million tonne of wheat under OMSS to bulk buyers from FCI's excess stocks. Due to scarcity of wheat in the open market, the market price of wheat has spiked by R300 per quintal to R1,650 per quintal in key growing regions of northern India during last one month.

"The fresh wheat allocation under OMSS has helped in getting supplies and prices have been also stabilised," a leading flour miller from Uttar Pradesh told FE. Under OMSS for the bulk consumers consisting of flour millers and wheat product makers, the FCI has fixed a reserve price of wheat at R1,323 per quintal for Delhi while prices for Haryana and Punjab have been fixed at R1,445 and R 1,483 per quintal, respectively. "The reserve price for wheat has been calculated on the basis of minimum support price for farmers along with expenses incurred by the corporation in transportation," a FCI official said.

Private traders have been asking the government to allocate more grain to private traders as FCI has stocks of more than 46 million tonne of wheat which is far above strategic reserve and buffer stocks norms.

The record wheat procurement of close to 39 million tonne (41% of the total output) by FCI and state government owned agencies in Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh from this year's production of close to 94 mt have also contributed towards availability of wheat in the open market.

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