Wheat Enough wheat to feed people; no plan to import: Govt
New Delhi: India has enough wheat to meet the domestic demand, the government has said rejecting a Bloomberg report that claimed that lower production and price rises worsened by a severe heatwave may force it to buy the grain from outside.
"There is no such plan to import wheat into India. Country has sufficient stocks to meet our domestic requirements and @FCI_India (Food Corporation of India) has enough stock for pubic distribution," the Department of Food and Public Distribution posted on Twitter in response to the report.
There is no such plan to import wheat into India. Country has sufficient stocks to meet our domestic requirements and @FCI_India has enough stock for pubic distribution.
— Department of Food & Public Distribution (@fooddeptgoi) August 21, 2022
On Wednesday, the government raised its wheat production estimate even as traders and forecasters had been scaling down output due to a severe heatwave.
India is the world's second-biggest grains producer. It harvested 106.84 million tonnes of wheat in 2022 a little over the previous estimate of 106.41 million tonnes, the government said Wednesday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service has pegged India's production at 99 million tonnes, while traders estimated output fell to as low as 95 million tonnes because of the heatwave, Reuters reported.
The wheat prices jumped to a record Rs 24,309 per tonne on Wednesday, nearly 15 percent from recent lows, dashing hopes that India could fill the gap created by the missing Ukraine grain, said the report.
Since the government's wheat procurement has dropped and local prices are showing an upward trend, it only indicates a sharp drop in production, according to a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm, said the report.
The dealer also said that difficult to believe that the production could be aroundt 106.84 million tonnes as claimed by the government, and it could be only around 95 million tonnes.
The government has cut down wheat procurement by 57 percent from a year ago to 18.8 million tonnes.
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