Narendra Modi to inaugurate e-tendering today

Nalgonda: The Central government, in order to marginalise the role of middlemen in the agriculture market and to provide minimum support price to farmer’s produce, has decided to start e-tendering under the National Agriculture Market (NAM) scheme.

1. Through online tendering, traders from any corner of the nation can make purchases of the farm produce
2. Market officials take photographs of the crop and decide its quality by allotting special code to each farmer
3. Officials will feed the details of the produce of each farmer in the computer to facilitate them for e-tendering
4. Once the online process is completed, details will be made available throughout the country
5. Either purchaser or trader, whoever quotes the highest bid, will own the particular crop

In this connection, Central government selected 44 markets in the Telangana State. Under the first phase, five markets in Thirumalagiri of Nalgonda district, Warangal, Badaypally, Malakpet and Nizamabad markets were selected under the pilot project.

Disclosing this to the media here on Wednesday, District Marketing Department Additional Director Aleem said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would inaugurate the NAM on Thursday at 6 pm through online and he would interact with some of the farmers of the e-tendering markets of his choice.

Aleem said that the Marketing department made all the necessary arrangements to fix rates online for purchasing the agricultural produce. At present, the purchasing of farmers’ agriculture produce was being done through open auction or tendering in agriculture markets, he added.

Aleem said that under this process, there was scope for the syndicate of traders to exploit the farmers. In this context, the Central government was introducing online tendering policy in an experimental basis, he added.

He said that through online tendering, traders from any corner of the nation could make purchases of the farm produce that comes into the market. Once farmers enter, the market officials concerned take photographs of the crop and decide the quality by allotting special code to each farmer, he added.

Aleem said that the officials would feed the details of the produce of each farmer in the computer to facilitate them for online tendering. Once the online process was completed, details would be made available throughout the country. Either purchaser or trader, whoever quotes the highest bid, would own the particular crop.

In this connection, e-tendering markets are provided with Wi-Fi, computers with internet connections and LED boards to let know the proposal of the traders to farmers. Like stock market LED boards, the LED boards give all the details regarding farmer’s crops that are brought to the market for sale. In this system, the farmers would get details immediately about the quality of their produce and the rate that was fixed for them.

The District Marketing Additional Director informed that e-services were available in Tirumalagiri, Devarakonda, Nakrakal, Suryapet and Miryalguda markets. As part of pilot project, online tendering will start on Thursday in Thirumalagiri market. At the initial stage, e-tendering would be implemented for paddy purchasing.

He said e-tendering was beneficial to farmers and the money after selling the produce would be deposited in their bank accounts within 24 hours. He said that the traders must have license of the respective market for purchasing the farmer’s agriculture commodities but in this process, anybody who gets license from the Department of Marketing would be eligible to do trading in any market.

Aleem explained the entire process involved in e-tendering of sale of crop of a farmer under the National Agriculture Marketing Scheme. In this connection, all necessary arrangements were completed at Tirumalgiri agricuture market for video conference in association with BSNL, he added.