In a bid to provide some relief to the citizens burdened by rise in prices of food items, the city government plans to soon revive a scheme under which subsidised wheat flour will be sold at over 400 outlets at around `14 per kg.

The decision to revive the scheme came after Union minister of state for food and civil supplies K.V. Thomas at a meeting with chief minister Sheila Dikshit agreed to her request to provide additional quota of subsidised wheat to Delhi.

New Delhi: Food Corporation of India (FCI) has warned that unless the government can distribute 750 lakh tonnes of food grain, there will be no storage space for the bumper harvest being currently procured, the food ministry told Rajya Sabha on Monday. The crisis of plenty has been engaging the government for a while as it is under pressure to distribute food grain to the poor or intervene in some manner to cool inflation, and the FCI alarm provides the clearest indication of the scale of the problem.

Food Minister K V Thomas on Monday said the problem of foodgrain storage was due to procurement exceeding targets because of record production and encouraging purchase policy, and assured the state governments all help in providing jute bags to overcome the “problem of plenty”. In the Rajya Sabha, he proposed an all-party meeting to work out a procurement policy to avoid such a crisis in future.

New Delhi With the grain stocks held with Food Corporation of India (FCI) and other state government owned agencies crossing a record level, the food ministry has proposed additional allocation of grain to BPL and APL families for dealing with storage crunch.

Under the proposal sent to finance ministry, the food ministry has proposed to hike grain allocation for the estimated 18 crore APL families to 15 kg per month from prevailing 10 kg per month. This will result in excess grains allocation of 6.5 million tonne.

New Delhi As part of its plan to create two-million-tonne-capacity silos for storing grain across the country, the government has approved creation of silos in 10 states with the capacities ranging from 4 lakh tonne to 50,000 tonne.

The state-level committees on silos are identifying suitable locations, which would be built via the private-public-partnership mode. Food minister KV Thomas said that while 4-lakh-tonne-capacity silos would be built in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh would get silos with a capacity 3.5 lakh tonne. Haryana and UP would get silos with 3-lakh-tonne capacity each.

Ministry proposes four options to the EGoM to expedite shipment of sweetener. Union food ministry has suggested four options to expedite sugar exports after the panel of ministers on food sought a mechanism that allows faster shipments.

Barely 24 hours before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to reconvene a meeting to discuss policies on export of farm products and storage of grains, the government has conceded another major demand of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar by allowing export of caesin, a value-added milk product.

“Export of casein and casein products has been moved from the ‘prohibited’ to ‘restricted’ category. Export of casein is now permitted under licence,” an official statement issued tonight said. The government had banned exports of casein and milk powder in February last year, following a fall in the domestic supply of milk.

New Delhi The government is set to lift a ban on fresh cotton export registration, although efforts to resolve the controversial issue amicably by putting a cap on further shipments eluded a consensus on Sunday, a day before the meeting convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss farm exports.

While agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is pitching for the complete removal of ban on fresh export registration in the year through September, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and commerce and textile minister Anand Sharma are in favour of allowing fresh licences up to two million bales to balance the interest of farmers with textile mills, sources said.

New Delhi India’s grain output is estimated to exceed the previous forecast to hit a fresh peak of 252.56 million tonne this crop year through June on higher-than-expected output of rice and wheat, although coarse cereal and pulse production will trail last year’s level.

The record harvest will keep key grain supplies steady and provide the much-needed comfort to the government as it gears up to implement a food security law, but it will also bring to the fore problems of storage. Moreover, a downward revision in the production of pulses, coarse cereal and oilseeds may weigh on prices.

New Delhi Notwithstanding apprehensions expressed by rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on the proposal of giving grain as part payment of wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, food minister KV Thomas on Sunday continued to support the idea. Thomas said, “There is enough surplus grain to be given to poor families.”

In a recent letter to the Jairam Ramesh, Thomas had made the proposal, which he said would also help ease the problems of excess foodgrain stocks for the government.