The offtake of wheat in the third round of e-auction, as part of the Centre’s Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS) to tame rising foodgrain prices, witnessed sales of over 42 per cent of the 4.18 lakh tonnes (lt) on offer on Wednesday. This was against the 21 per cent purchase in the first round.

However, rice continued to find few takers with only 0.07 per cent of 3.63 lt offered in the current round being sold. But the purchase was higher than last week at 290 tonnes.

“In the e-auction (held Wednesday), 1.77 lt of wheat and 290 tonnes of rice were sold. The wheat saw an increase of 38 per cent in sales whereas there was an increase of 70 per cent in rice compared with the last e-auction,” an official said. The auction in wheat was held across depots and in rice across 251 depots in the country.

Govt claims on bids

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 claims that by limiting the bidding quantity maximum at 100 tonnes per entity in each auction, the sold quantity has been reaching the targeted section. 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.

However, traders said by capping the wheat purchase at 100 tonnes maximum, only middlemen are buying and selling to others at par with market rates. “Neither a small attachakki (flour mill) buys from FCI, nor any roller flour miller (large processor) is getting sufficient quantity,” said a trader who has been in the wheat trade for the last 37 years. On average, a roller flour mill requires 2,000-3,000 tonnes per month and in the e-auction they can buy maximum of 400 tonnes per month.

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.

4 buyers for rice

In the current round, wheat was sold at a weighted average ₹2,156.67/quintal for FAQ and at ₹2,138.05 for URS.

The rice auction saw only four successful bidders, two from Maharashtra and one each from Kerala and Karnataka with the combined sale at 290 tonnes. The weighted average selling price was ₹3,110.07/quintal against the reserve price of ₹3,100/quintal.

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