With mandi prices of pulses ruling below minimum support price (MSP) after staying at elevated levels for two years, the government is set to ramp up purchase of these items at the benchmark rates.
With the buffer stocks falling sharply to less than half of the norm, agencies – farmers’ cooperative Nafed and National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) — are aiming to bolster stocks and ensure remunerative prices to farmers.
“With robust kharif and rabi pulses crop prospects, we will buy as much as possible from the farmers to build a buffer,” an official told FE.
Currently mandi prices of tur, a key kharif harvest, is ruling around Rs 7525/quintal at Akola, Maharashtra against of MSP of Rs 7550/quital, while current prices atleast 28% less than Rs 10,525/quintal prevailed a year ago.
Similarly chana, a key rabi pulses variety, which has just started to arrive in mandis is ruling around MSP of Rs 5650/quintal currently which likely rule below benchmark price as arrivals peak in next couple of weeks.
Sources said against the buffer norm of 3.5 million tonne (MT), which the government needs to carry out a market intervention programme for curbing the possibility of rise in prices, the agencies currently hold only 1.36 MT of pulses.
Out of which a major chunk of stock is moong (0.75 MT) and masur (0.53 MT). Some of the masur stocks were created through imports.
From the Kharif harvest for 2024-25 season, agencies so far have purchased 81,000 tonne of tur under the price support scheme (PSS) of the agriculture ministry so far while in FY23 and FY24 agencies could not purchase tur as prices were ruling significantly above MSP.
The ministry has sanctioned purchase of 1.32 MT of tur in 2024-25 season under price support scheme (PSS) for pulses.
Overall pulses procurement – tur, moong, urad, masur and chana by Nafed and NCCF under the PSS for creating buffer stock sharply declined to only 0.69 MT in 2023-24 from 2.83 MT and 3.03 MT in 2022-23 and 2021-22 respectively because of lower output pushing up prices above MSP.
For the 2025-26 rabi season, the agriculture ministry so far has approved chana procurement of 1.11 MT for Madhya Pradesh (0.72 MT), Uttar Pradesh (0.19 MT), Karnataka (96,498 tonne), Chhattisgarh (52,738 tonne) and Telangana (37,083 tonne) from farmers at MSP.
Under PSS, MSP purchase of masur (0.94 MT), moong (1548 tonne) and urad (65,450 tonne) have been approved for MSP purchase
Officials said the agencies may purchase more than 2 MT of chana in the 2025-26 season with Rajasthan, biggest producer of pulse variety will be soon approaching centre commencing MSP purchase operations from the farmers.
The agriculture ministry is aiming to boost pulse production to 29.9 MT in the 2024-25 crop years (July-June), an increase of over 23% from 2023-24 crop year.
In 2019, the policy of maintaining a buffer stock of pulses was created aimed at controlling prices through market intervention programmme.
The buffer stocks for pulses were created mostly through domestic procurement via PSS but also through imports using price stabilisation fund.
Despite the prospects of robust kharif harvest, the government last month had extended the free import policy for tur or pigeon peas by a year, until March 31, 2026.
The government had allowed the import of tur under the ‘free category’ since May, 2021 aimed at meeting shortfall in domestic production against the demand. Subsequently, the free import regime has been extended from time to time.
