AgriMin approves Rs 500 cr price stabilisation fund

The Agriculture Ministry approved setting up of price stabilisation fund (PSF) with a corpus of Rs 500 crore to support market interventions for price control of perishable agri-horticultural commodities. "Initially the fund is proposed to be used for onion and potato only. Losses incurred, if any, in the operations will be shared between the Centre and the State," the Ministry said in a statement, adding PSF will be a Central Sector Scheme. The procurement of these commodities will be undertaken directly from farmers or farmers' organisations at farm gate/mandi and made available at a more reasonable price to the consumers. The fund will be used to advance interest free loan to state governments and central agencies to support their working capital and other expenses on procurement and distribution interventions for such commodities. For this purpose, the states will set up a revolving fund to which Centre and states will contribute equally (50:50). The ratio of Centre-State contribution to the State level corpus in respect of North East States will however be 75:25. The revolving fund, the Ministry said, is being mooted so that requirements for all future interventions can be decided and met with at the state-level itself. Central agencies will, however, set up their revolving fund entirely with the advance from the Centre.