Collectors told to notify cotton procurement centres immediately after completion of CCI bids process

HYDERABAD

Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao has asked the Marketing Department authorities to notify the ginning mills that would emerge as the successful bidders in tenders called for cotton procurement so that purchase of the produce is taken up at the earliest.

At a virtual review meeting held on Sunday over cotton procurement, the Minister said that a total of 328 ginning mills had participated in the bids invited by the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) for procurement, and tenders were opened on October 10 to complete the technical bids process by October 11.

He instructed District Collectors to notify the ginning mills that would emerge as bidders for procurement so that the process was speeded up. He suggested them to make farmers enrol their names along with mobile numbers in the “Kapas Kisan” app of the CCI for sale of cotton at the minimum support price.

The Minister asked officials to let farmers log into the app based on their Aadhaar numbers and OTP generated through them if mobile numbers were not available. Farmers who were not in the CCI database should also be allowed to register afresh.

Letter to Union MInister

He addressed a letter to Union Minister for Agriculture Shivraj Singh Chouhan with a request to lift the limit of procuring 25% of the total produce of sesamum, bengalgram, groundnut, soybean, greengram and others under the price support scheme at MSP and also include maize and jowar under PSS.

At another review meeting held on Saturday, Minister for Civil Supplies N. Uttam Kumar Reddy stated that the Civil Supplies Corporation was planning to procure 80 lakh tonnes of paddy out of the estimated production of 148.03 lakh tonnes from 66.80 lakh acres. The 80 lakh tonnes procurement would include 40 lakh tonnes each of fine and common varieties.

Of the 8,342 procurement centres planned for the Kharif marketing season, 1,205 were already opened and had started procurement. Of the total procurement centres, IKP would handle/set up 3,517, PACS 4,259 and others 566. The government was planning to complete the Kharif paddy procurement by the end of January second week.