Hyderabad: Poor monsoon, drought and fall in agriculture production has fuelled hoarding of food grains and pulses by traders, which is leading to escalation of prices.
Raids carried out by the civil supplies department in the last two weeks revealed that though there are only 15,000 registered traders in Telangana, 50,000 traders were resorting to hoarding to cash in on the shortage of food grains and pulses.
Even registered traders were hoarding stocks five to 10 times of what they were permitted. There are 2,500 registered traders in Hyderabad but another 5,000 people were doing the business without registration and were hoarding food grains.
The price of pulses touched Rs 200 per kg in retail market on Monday but the state government continues to claim on its website that the price was Rs 160 as on October 18.
With complaints of rampant hoarding, the Centre has written to all state governments asking them to strictly implement the stock limits on pulses held by licensed food processors, importers, exporters, whole sale and retail traders besides large departmental retailers.
It directed state governments to intensify anti-hoarding operations and keep a check on black-marketing and profiteering by traders.
“The Centre has recently amended the norms under Essential Commodities Act, 1955, with immediate effect to enable imposition of stock limits on pulses and other food grains.
Those who violate these norms face imprisonment, penalty and cancellation of trade registration. The civil supplies department has expedited raids on all traders across the state and it has started giving the desired results. The vigilance department has also been pressed into service to check hoardings,” said Mr Etela Rajender, the state minister for civil supplies.
The prices of pulses have risen sharply in the past few months due to a fall in domestic output by about 2 million tonnes (MT) to 17.20 MT in the 2014-15 crop year (July-June) owing to deficient monsoon and unseasonal rains.
