Govt hikes cap on OMSS rice auction to 1,000 tonnes from 100 tonnes, wheat offtake rises to 60%

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The fourth round of the electronic auction, as part of the center’s Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS) to tame rising food grain prices, saw sales of nearly 60 percent of the 1.84 thousand tons of wheat offered on Wednesday, despite traders. He is removed from the operation. This was against the 42 per cent buy recorded in the previous round.

However, with the yield of rice reduced to only 10 tons, the government raised the upper limit from 100 tons per entity in the country to 1,000 tons per district per buyer of the next round. But there is no change in the reserve rate as expected. In the last round, 290 tons of rice were sold.

Official sources said that 1.09 liters of wheat were sold in the online auction held on Wednesday, while only 10 tons were sold out of 3.73 liters of rice offered. The auction for wheat was held in 290 rice warehouses in 251 warehouses in the country.

Center initiative

As part of the Center’s initiative to control the retail prices of rice and wheat atta (wheat flour), Food Corporation of India (FCI) conducts weekly electronic auctions to allow retailers, processors and merchants to buy from Central Pool inventory.

The government said that setting the bid amount at 100 tons for each entity in each auction, and preventing merchants from the auction process helped it ensure that the sold quantity reaches the target segment of consumers. Officials said the decision is to encourage small and marginal end-users and ensure more participants can step up and bid for the quantity from the warehouse of their choice.

Flour millers are interested in buying from FCI through auction as the government has kept the standard reserve price low – $2,150/quintal for fair quality average (FAQ) variety and $2,125 for comfort specification (URS) grain. While the average wholesale market price of wheat in north India is currently hovering at $2,300-2,350/quintal, traders said.

In the current round, the weighted average selling price was $2,163.67/quintal for the FAQ variety and $2,138.02/quintal for the URS variety. The weighted average selling price of rice was $3,100/quintal, the same as the price of the All India Reserve.