Raipur, Nov 3 (IANS) The Chhattisgarh government will give a bonus of Rs.50 on a quintal of paddy it will procure from farmers till Jan 31 over the minimum support price (MSP), an official said here Wednesday.
‘The state will bear an additional burden of Rs.250 crore to give the bonus over the MSP,’ said a senior agriculture department official.
Farmers will now get Rs.1,030 for a quintal of common variety of paddy and Rs.1,060 for grade-A paddy.
Since the state has recorded a bumper production following good monsoon rains this year, the Chhattisgarh government has set a target to procure five million tonnes of paddy in the kharif marketing season 2010-11. The paddy procurement started Nov 1 and would continue till Jan 31, 2011.
The government has earmarked Rs.5,000 crore for purchasing the paddy in all the 18 districts through the village-level cooperative societies.
The government has set up 1,578 procurement centres across the state for the paddy purchase.
Chhattisgarh is a major paddy growing state in the country. Last year, around 4.4 million tonnes of paddy were procured in the state.
