While all eyes are on India’s wheat exports following spectacular growth – more than an eight-fold increase in five years– the success story of maize is not less attractive. It has increased six times between 2016-17 and 2020-21 and this fiscal shipments possibly may increase by 25 per cent from year-ago.

According to official data, the country had exported 5.66 lakh tonnes (lt) worth ₹ 1,030.13 crore during 2016-17 which touched 28.79 lt valued at ₹4,675.78 crore in 2020-21. In the current fiscal, shipments have touched 30.3 lt worth ₹6,071 crore during April-January. Bangladesh, Vietnam and Nepal are the top three buyers of India’s maize.

Industry sources said total shipments of maize could be around 36 lt this year and could have been more, if not for a dry period in domestic supply now. The next supply will come when rabi-grown maize crops come from Telangana and Bihar, an industry official said.

Increase in production

The country’s maize production is estimated to have increased by a quarter to 324.2 lt in 2021-22 crop year (July-June) from 259 lt in 2016-17. “Earlier whenever maize prices were going up, the government used to ban export under pressure from the poultry industry. Fortunately, that has not happened this time and India is seen as a dependable destination for maize. The government needs to maintain a fine balance between domestic feed prices and export opportunities without getting into knee-jerk reaction,” said a former official of poultry industry.

According to the Agmarknet portal, the average mandi price of maize in Karnataka has increased 44 per cent to ₹2,130/quintal during the first fortnight of this month from the year-ago period. The average price in the State was ₹1,723 in January and ₹ 1,945 in February.

The government said in Parliament that exports of 11 major kharif crops-- rice, bajra, maize, ragi, tur, urad, moong, castor, sesame, niger, soyabean – more than doubled to 211.59 lt (worth ₹74,390 crore) during 2020-21 from 103.56 lt (₹51,071 crore) the previous year. Similarly, exports of seven rabi-grown crops-- wheat, barley, gram, mustard, masur, linseed and safflower –increased to 24.05 lt (₹5,718 crore) from 4.21 lt (₹1,545 crore) during this period.

Meanwhile, the government has said the promotion of exports of agricultural products is a continuous process. The government has taken several steps at State/district levels to promote agricultural exports, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said in the Lok Sabha on March 15. State-specific action plans have been prepared by some States and State Level Monitoring Committees (SLMCs), nodal agencies for agricultural exports and cluster-level committees have been formed in a number of States, he said.

Country and product-specific action plans have also been formulated to promote exports. Besides, institutional framework has been created under the ‘District as Export Hub’ plan, Tomar said.