Govt to set up 259 maize purchase centres soon

Hyderabad: Caretaker Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy has directed the officials to set up 259 maize purchasing centres across the State. The Minister said the State government had purchased 3 lakh metric tonnes of maize last year and the government has targeted this year to purchase 5 lakh metric tonnes and asked the officials to take steps in this direction.

The Minister conducted a review meeting at Pragathi Bhavan on purchase of crops through Markfed with the officials here on Sunday. He said the officials have to secure required loan through banks with State government’s surety and added that the government would purchase maize with minimum support price of Rs 1,700, though the prices were low in the open market.

He also said they urged the NAFED to give permission to purchase lentils and green gram and informed that they would purchase them after getting permission from NAFED. He requested the farmers to not to sell their crop in a hurry to private businessmen at low price. Pocharam also advised the officials to take precautionary measures and see that there won’t be any shortage of seeds for Rabi season.

He directed the officials to provide seeds to the farmers. Stating that TRS government would take decisions to see that the farmers get support price to their produce, he said for the benefit of farmers the government purchased the produce though it suffered losses.

This year also, following the directions of caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the State government would be setting up purchasing centres across the State to the farmers produce. Agriculture Department Commissioner Rahul Bojja, Markfed MD M Surender and officials concerned participated in the review meeting.