Chandigarh, April 30 (Inditop) Over 10.1 million tonnes of wheat has been procured in Punjab this season, a record in recent years, food and supplies officials said here Thursday.
The officials said the record procurement till Wednesday evening had been achieved in just over 20 days this year.
The target of 10 million tonnes of procurement was achieved last year May 8.
Procurement in the state, which started April 1, picked up around Baisakhi festival (April 13-14) due to late arrival of stocks in the grain markets.
Nearly 98 percent of the total wheat procured in Punjab’s 1,547 centres has been procured by government agencies.
Five of the government procurement agencies are from Punjab while the sixth one is the central government’s Food Corp of India (FCI).
The Punjab government agency, Markfed, has made the highest procurement at over 23 percent of the total. FCI has procured 16 percent of the wheat.
The highest procurement was done in Ferozepur district (1.2 million tonnes) followed by Sangrur (1 million tonnes) and Patiala (833,803 tonnes), the officials added.
Farmers have been made payments of nearly Rs.10,000 crore by the agencies for the wheat procured so far.
