With the Food Corporation of India (FCI) reiterating its position of not providing more food grains to States under its Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS), the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation (TNCSC) is negotiating with the National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India (NCCF) and other States to procure the additional quantity of 50,000 tonnes to 60,000 tonnes a month of rice that it needs.
While the NCCF has quoted a price of ₹35.45 per kg of rice, the TNCSC is awaiting a response from States such as Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and Chhattisgarh on their prices. “As soon as we get the quotes from the others too, we will send a proposal to the government,” said an official. The State plans to get six lakh tonnes of rice, which can take care of its requirements for the next 10 months.
The monthly allocation by the Centre to Tamil Nadu is approximately 2.97 lakh tonnes of rice for the public distribution system (PDS) under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). Over and above this quantity, the State requires, on an average, 50,000 tonnes to 60,000 tonnes per month, given the fact that it has over 2.2 crore rice-drawing ration cards. One of the routes used by the State traditionally to meet the shortfall is to purchase rice from the FCI under the OMSS. Had this route been available now, the State would have got rice at ₹34 per kg. At times, other sources have also been also tapped: five years ago, the State had purchased rice from the NCCF and other States too. Between December 2022 and March 2023, it bought 3 lakh tonnes from the NCCF.
