Govt to link 28 more mandis to eNAM: Agri Secretary

New Delhi: The government will integrate 28 new wholesale mandis (market yards) with the online trading platform eNAM, taking the total count to 1,389 in the country, Agriculture Secretary Manoj Ahuja said on Tuesday.

At present, 1,361 regulated mandis in 23 states and four Union Territories are linked with the electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM), launched on April 26. "To further strengthen e-NAM, 28 new mandis were approved recently for integration to take the total count of mandis to 1389," Ahuja said at a workshop here on eNAM 2.0.

He also emphasised on the importance of providing key information to the stakeholders of e-NAM at the right time. "It is important to remove information asymmetry," he said. Ahuja further said the information pertaining to quality of produce is as vital to the buyer, as the prices of commodities are vital to sellers. "From an economic perspective, the whole value chain must be made efficient and wastage must be reduced," he said.

Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, Additional Secretary in the Agriculture Ministry, said e-NAM 2.0 will be an advanced version of the existing e-NAM, wherein the reforms in the State Acts will be very important in the success of e-NAM 2.0. Three farmer producer organizations, Churchu Nari Urja FPCL (Jharkhand), Maangani City Consortium (Tamil Nadu) and Jaivik Shri FPCL, Koraput (Odisha), shared their experiences of using the e-NAM platform.