NEW DELHI: The Centre is working on a revised pulses import plan to achieve the set target of 1.5 million tonnes of import during 2009-10, in a bid to increase the domestic supply and keep soaring pulses prices in check. Overall, there is a demand-supply gap of almost four million tonnes.
But upto September 8 this year, PSUs have contracted only 2.95 lakh tonnes of pulses for import, of which some 68000 tonnes have arrived by September in the country’s ports. Worried over the fact that imports by PSUs were way below the target, the department of consumer affairs rushed of a delegation to Myanmar to hold discussions on the currency of payment. However, a government official in the know said that the Myanmar government had sought payment in advance and further negotiations were currently on with Myanmar, the world’s biggest pulses exporter after Canada and whose biggest clients were India and Japan.
The increasing production-supply mismatch and hardening international prices against tighter global output has meant consistently higher import prices. For 2009-10, the projected production is around 15 million tonnes against a demand of almost 19 million tonnes. Demand is expected to go up by another million tonnes by 2010-11 and by two million tonnes the successive year despite a virtually stagnant producton of aroud 15 million. In comparision, against a relatively slower pace of price hike for pulses in 2008-09, more than nine lakh tonnes were imported under the PSU pulses import scheme devised by the Centre but only after burdening the exchequer markedly...
In order to boost the availability, the government removed, all restrictions on imports by reducing import taxes to nil and allowing the private sector to import. The existing scheme for distribution of pulses through the PDS was extended .Under a new scheme three years ago, it also instructed all the major PSUs to import including STC, PEC, MMTC and NAFED and took a “conscious decision” to support their losses upto 15% even while paying them 1.5% of the value of operation as service charges.
Source : The Economic Times