Gandhinagar:

The central government has given its nod to the proposal of the Gujarat government for the procurement of additional 4 lakh tons of groundnut from farmers at minimum support price (MSP).

A senior official of the Agriculture department here today said that the center has approved the proposal of Gujarat government and now via National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd.(NAFED) 4 lakh ton of additional purchase of groundnut would take place.

He said that the procurement of groundnuts at 137 centers of APMC since October 25 (Labh Pacham) was more or less on and it would now continue.

So far around 8 lakh ton of groundnut has been purchased from over 4 lakh farmers in the state at a cost of around 3500 crores of which around 2600 crore have been paid in the accounts of the farmers directly by the nodal agencies, he said.

Notably, despite this year being a record and bumper production year for groundnut in Gujarat, the state government was paying a bonus of Rs 50 per quintal (100 kg) above the central government fixed MSP of Rs 4450 per quintal taking it to a round figure of 4500 per quintal. The normal market price of the same per quintal wa around Rs 3500.

CM Vijay Rupani and Agriculture minister R C Faldu had time and again reiterated that the procurement of groundnut at MSP won’t be stopped.

DeshGujarat