Govt hikes cap on OMSS rice auction, wheat offtake rises to 60%

The fourth round of e-auction, as part of the Centre’s Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS) to tame rising foodgrain prices, witnessed sales of nearly 60 per cent of the 1.84 lakh tonnes (lt) of wheat on offer on Wednesday, despite traders being kept out of the process. This was against the 42 per cent purchase recorded in the previous round.

However, as rice offtake further slipped to just 10 tonnes, the government has raised the upper limit from 100 tonnes per entity in a State to 1,000 tonnes per region for each buyer from next round. But, there is no change in the reserve price as was speculated. In last the round, 290 tonnes of rice got sold.

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In the e-auction held on Wednesday, 1.09 lt of wheat got sold whereas only 10 tonnes of rice were sold out of 3.73 lt on offer, official sources said. The auction in wheat was held across 290 depots and in rice across 251 depots in the country.

Centre’s initiative

As a part of the Centre’s initiative to control the retail price of rice, wheat and atta (wheat flour), the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has been conducting weekly e-auctions to allow retailers, processors and traders to buy from the Central Pool stock.

The Government has said limiting the bidding quantity at 100 tonnes per entity in each auction and barring traders from the auction process has helped it to ensure the sold quantity reaches the targeted section of consumers. This decision is to encourage small and marginal end users and ensure that more participants could come forward and bid for the quantity from their depot of choice, officials said.

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Flour millers are interested to buy from FCI through the auction as the government has kept the uniform reserve price at low — ₹2,150/quintal for fair average quality (FAQ) variety and ₹2,125 for under relaxed specifications (URS) type grain. Whereas the average wholesale market price of wheat in north India currently hovers at ₹2,300-2,350/ quintal, traders said.

In the current round, the weighted average selling price was ₹2,163.67/quintal for FAQ variety and ₹2,138.02/quintal for URS variety. The weighted average selling price of rice was ₹3,100/quintal, same as its pan India reserve price.