The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the continuation of fortified rice distribution under the food security law and other welfare schemes until December 2028, which may cumulatively cost the government over ₹17,000 crore since fortification programme began in 2022.

Fortified rice is made as per the standards fixed by food safety regulator FSSAI, which has prescribed blending rice with three micronutrients — Iron, Folic Acid and Vitamin B12. The rice fortification process involves the addition of Fortified Rice Kernels (FRK) enriched with micro-nutrients to regular rice (custom milled rice).

Experts said benefits are far more than risks in the fortification programme, which is implemented in 140 countries. As India has the highest mortality in the world due to bleeding during delivery, rice fortification aims at helping the government to offset it. The micronutrient content in fortified rice is much higher than brown or parboiled rice, some experts claimed.

Information & Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the total financial implication to supply free fortified rice will be ₹17,082 crore, fully funded by the Centre.

Malnutrition cost

The annual expenditure on fortification varies as it is based on the procurement quantity of paddy and the government has taken a policy decision to do fortification of all the quantities it is buying under the MSP operation, officials said. Last year, Food Ministry officials had estimated the fortification cost at ₹2,680 crore per year.

The cost of fortification for the rice miller also gets reduced based on the volume, officials said, and added that though there is a cap of ₹0.73 per kg fixed by the government as fortification cost, States are getting it at cheaper rate, derived through tender.

According to the Food Ministry, malnutrition costs India at least ₹77,000 crore annually in terms of lost productivity, illness and death. It also earlier said that the country loses about 1 per cent of GDP due to iron deficiency (anaemia). One rupee spent on nutritional interventions could generate ₹34.1-Rs 38.6 in public economic returns in the country, it had projected.

The rice fortification initiative will continue as a central sector initiative with 100 per cent funding by the Centre as part of PMGKAY (Food Subsidy), thus providing a unified institutional mechanism for implementation, an official statement said on Wednesday.

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) conducted between 2019 and 2021, anaemia remains a widespread issue in India, affecting children, women, and men across various age groups and income levels.

Related Topics