Govt steps up effort to raise food storage facilities

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S M Jahangir
The government has stepped up efforts to raise the capacity of the existing warehouses as inadequate space is hindering the official Boro rice procurement drive, officials said.
The Food and Disaster Ministry recently asked its food department to take necessary steps to create more storage facilities to help achieve the 1.2 million tonnes of rice purchase target.
"Taking the prevailing warehouse shortage into account, we have already advised the authorities concerned to either create new storage facilities or make the existing abandoned warehouses useable," said a ministry officail.
The food procurement authorities earlier informed the ministry that they were facing immense space storage for food-grains, especially for the Boro rice, the official.
Currently, the authorities are able to store around 250,000 to 300,000 tonnes of food-grain in the existing warehouses against requirement of storing nearly 700,000 tonnes of rice, officail sources said.
According to officials, the government has already signed purchase agreements with local rice millers for about 0.76 million tonnes of rice under its current Boro procurement drive.
Of the quantity, the millers have, so far, supplied nearly 0.3 million tonnes of rice while delivery of the remaining quantity of foodgrain is in the pipeline, they mentioned.
In addition to that, the authorities have also to procure about 0.44 million tonnes of rice to reach the Boro procurement target. Besides, the government will also require import of a significant quantity of wheat for maintaining its food operations.
The net storage capacity under the government's existing food godowns, according to sources at the food and disaster ministry, is estimated at 1.4 million to 1.5 million tonnes.
Of the total capacity, the government has now a stock of about 1.1 million tonnes of food grains.
"So, the procurement department finds itself in a difficult situation to cope with the prevailing storage problem, despite the fact that the millers are keen to supply rice to the authorities for better price offer," said an official.
The government earlier fixed the rice procurement price at Tk 22 per kg, which is comparatively higher that that of open market prices.
Admitting the present space problem, the Food and Disaster Minister recently informed the media that a stock of at least 2.0 million tonnes of food grains is necessary to help the government run its food operations, especially for widening its social safety-net programmers and also tackling any possible food deficit.
He also said the government had a plan to enhance its food storage capacity up to 3.0 million tonnes in the near future.
Some donor agencies, including Japan, has already pledged necessary funding support for helping the government set up new food godowns, said the official.