No sale of crops below MSP: CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy

Amaravati: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy directed the officials to ensure that no crop is purchased at less than Minimum Support Price (MSP) and complete the payment within 10 days of the purchase.

During a review with the officials on CMAPP (Comprehensive Monitoring of Agriculture Prices and Procurement) and e-marketing held here on Wednesday, the Chief Minister stressed that no farmer should incur any loss and instructed the officials to take immediate action on receiving any alert of farmers selling their crops below the MSP. He stated that information about the MSP for crops should be made available at all 10,641 RBKs (Rythu Bharosa Kendras) on a daily basis and directed the officials to monitor the remunerative prices of crops and review them if there was any price fall.

He told the officials to ensure farmers get their payment within 10 days of the crop purchase and display the MSP of the crops at RBKs. Necessary measures should be taken in procuring paddy, groundnut and cotton that were damaged in recent rains at a remunerative price and safeguard farmers.

The officials informed that 5,812 crop purchase centres have been established across the state, as it was estimated that 1,09,24,524 metric tonne of crops will be harvested in this kharif.

On setting up of Multipurpose Facility Centres at RBKs, it was estimated that Rs 9,093 crore is required to set up a total of 13 facilities. They include warehouses, drying platform, collection centres, cold rooms for storage, custom hiring centres, primary processing centres, assaying equipment, Janata Bazaars, bulk milk cooling units, cattle sheds and aqua infra in select villages, procurement centres and e-marketing.

The Chief Minister emphasised providing of infrastructure facilities to strengthen RBKs and said pre-processing units and godowns were needed very much at village level and told the officials to establish them on a priority basis.

HE also stressed the need to strengthen security and payment gateways along with delivery logistics and ensuring smooth transactions between buyer and seller. After placing an order, the crop should reach the buyer in 3-4 days without any hassles.

Minister Kurasala Kannababu, special chief secretary Poonam Malakondaiah, special commissioner for marketing Pradyumna, special commissioner for agriculture Arun Kumar, special secretary for marketing Y Madhusudan Reddy, commissioner for civil supplies Kona Sasidhar and other officials were present at the review meeting.