Hyderabad: The civil supplies department which had mulled installation of sortex machines to increase the milling capacity of paddy may not go ahead with the plan. The department has found that the existing milling capacity is more than sufficient to match the state's paddy procurement.
While the state has 3,172 mills, 3,099 of them participate in the MSP (minimum support price) operations. The combined milling capacity of raw (2,155) and boiled (944) rice mills is around 400 lakh metric tonnes (LMT).
The state produces 300 to 350 LMT depending on the season while the actual procurement is 100 to 130 LMT. This milling potential is for 300 days of the year and the chances for more paddy milling is available in the remaining days. The government procures around 30 per cent of the paddy grown.
With the millers not giving guarantees for the paddy taken by them and failing to deliver rice in a timely manner, the officials had mulled setting up mills on behalf of the department. This, it has been discovered, is not needed.
The new machines if installed would only add to the beleaguered corporation’s woes which the government says is steeped in debt of around Rs.56,000 crore and losses of Rs.11,000 crore.
