After initiating sales of wheat flour, chana and onion at subsidised rates to tame food inflation, the government has started to sell moong dal at a subsidised rate at retail outlets of various agencies.
Sources told FE that moong dal is being sold at a discount of Rs 15/kg through retail outlets of farmers’ cooperative Nafed and will be available at several other outlets and mobile vans of National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) and Kendriya Bhandars.
“We have started to sell moong dal at Rs 107/kg and raw dal at Rs 93/kg through various outlets,” an official said Officials said without a discount, the cost of moong procured this year by the farmers’ cooperative Nafed is at Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs 7,755/quintal translated into Rs 123/kg. This is against the all-India average retail prices of pulses variety at Rs 120/kg on Thursday.
Currently the farmers’ cooperative Nafed has 0.5 million tonne (MT) of moong stock against a buffer of 0.1 MT. The official said that Nafed would continue to sell moong dal and chana dal from the stock in the wholesale market as well as through retail outreach programme.
In July, the government had commenced selling chana dal in retail packs under brand name Bharat Dal at highly subsidized rates of Rs.60/kg pack and Rs 55/kg for 30 kg pack to make pulses available to consumers at affordable prices.
However trade sources said that Nafed on Thursday has sold chana in the open market at Rs 59.25/kg for Gujrat while the federation is selling chana from buffer of around 2 million tone the price band of Rs 58 – Rs 60/kg for the other locations in the last few weeks, which is above the MSP for 2024-25 season of Rs 54.4/kg.
Inflation in ‘pulses’ category rose to 20.23% in November from 18.7% in October this year. The moong and chana split varieties of pulses reported a price rise of 13.33% and 13.5% respectively last month on year.
Last month, the government had launched sale of wheat flour at a subsidised rate of Rs 27.50/kg under the brand name ‘Bharat Atta’ across the country to provide relief to consumer from high prices.
So far, 84,519 tonne of wheat has been lifted by Kendriya Bhandar, farmers’ cooperatives Nafed and NCCF from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) at MSP rate for converting into ‘Bharat Atta’. The corporation has allocated 0.4 MT of grain to these agencies till January 2024.
Nafed and NCCF are currently selling onion from the buffer stock at a highly subsidised rate of Rs 25/kg to consumers in various towns. Both the agencies had purchased 0.51 MT of onion mostly from the rabi harvest from the farmers and 0.27 MT has been sold through retail intervention so far.
Retail onion inflation rose by a steep 86.46% in November. The two agencies will procure 0.2 MT of kharif onions from the farmers and sell it through wholesale and retail interventions.
