New Delhi,june 11:
The government’s minimum support prices for agriculture crops are way higher then domestic market prices and international rates, Union minister Nitin Gadkari said on Thursday as he stressed on finding alternative solutions before an “economic crisis” is created.While the government fixes the rate, called minimum support price or MSP, at which it buys crops such as wheat and paddy from farmers, it also provides a subsidy to help export sugar.”The most important problem in this sector is that (among) the international price for agriculture commodities and the market price and the MSP, there is a vast difference. Now there are a lot of problems, some political problems are also there. It is very difficult for the government to take decisions.”But the ground reality is that our MSP is higher than the market price and international price. So this is now going to create a big economic crisis for the country.”We need to find out some options, alternatives for that, and without resolving that issue in agriculture, we cannot accelerate our economy because maximum purchasing power where we need to increase the potential in agriculture,” Gadkari said in a webinar.He said that the country has surplus rice and wheat and there is a problem of storage of these grains.Also, the government provided Rs 6,000 crore subsidy to export 60 lakh tonnes of sugar as the country is surplus in the sweetener, he said.The MSME and transport minister said: “In the agriculture area, there are some serious problems we are facing, we have surplus rice and wheat….we do not have a place for storage. It is totally full. We are surplus in rice and wheat for three years”.Gadkari also said that he has suggested for the formulation of a policy on converting rice into ethanol or bio-ethanol.He suggested this in a meeting with top officials, including principal advisor to Prime Minister P K Sinha and secretaries of food and civil supplies, agriculture, oil, non-conventional energy, and MSME, on Wednesday. “Presently our ethanol production is Rs 20,000 crore and imports are Rs 6-7 lakh crore. So now we are planning to make ethanol economy of Rs 1 lakh crore,” he said adding there are 200 closed sugar factories which can be converted for bio-ethanol production.He added that in states like Punjab, Haryana and some parts of Uttar Pradesh, there is a need to change the crop pattern and reduce the acreage of wheat and rice.
