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Thomas gears up for Food Security Bill
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Thursday, 10 February, 2011, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Our Bureau, Mumbai
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Even though the UPA government is still grappling over the proposed National Food Security Bill, food minister K V Thomas has already started to work out modalities for augmenting procurement and storage capacities of the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
“We need to substantially enhance storage capacities and increase procurement after the passage of the Food Security Bill,” Thomas said after the food ministers conference of 9 northern states. The key challenge, he said, was to enhance storage capacities to 60 million tonnes from the current level of 43 million tonnes. “The added capacities would be built by the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC), state warehousing corporations and through public-private partnership,” the minister said.
Thomas asked the state governments to plug loopholes in the PDS and increase storage capacity before the enactment of the proposed National Food Security Bill. “There are loopholes in the PDS. The effort is to solve beforehand all the problems that may come up while implementing the Food Security Act,” he said.
The state governments had been asked to address three core issues – PDS reform, stepping up storage units and social accounting of food grains sold via PDS, he said.
On the Food Security Bill, he commented that the “National Advisory Council is working on it. The draft food Bill will be placed before an empowered group of ministers and later at the Cabinet. My job is to keep ready all infrastructure and required food grains for the successful implementation of the Act.”
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