Union Minister for Agriculture rules out any increase
Hyderabad, January 30, 2008The Union Minister for Agriculture, Sharad Pawar has virtually ruled out any further increase in the Minimum Support Price for paddy at this stage. He was responding to the two letters written by Telugu Desam President, N Chandrababu Naidu last year requesting for an increase. He pointed out that the price support policy for agricultural commodities remunerative price to the growers but safeguard the interest of the consumers.
In his letter, Pawar explained that the government announced the MSP based on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), the views of the State and Central Ministries. The CACP while formulating the recommendation considered the factors like cost of production covering not only paid out costs but also imputed value of owned assets including family labour for which farmers do no not incur case expenses. The CACP has thus projected Rs.594.63 per quintal for paddy as weighted average cost of production as against the cost of wheat at Rs.624.46 per quintal for 2007-08.
The total bonus of Rs.100 per quintal, the derived MSP for rice of common variety worked out to Rs.1,117.50 per quintal. For Grade A variety it worked out to Rs.1,161.50 per quintal which was comparable to the MSP of Rs.1,000 per quintal for wheat, he said.
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