Trade restrictions on food commodities including wheat, rice and sugar are expected to bring down total agricultural exports of the country by about USD4 billion, officials of the Commerce Ministry as well as APEDA said in a press briefing.

A significant fall of about 9 per cent has already been witnessed from APEDA’s basket of agricultural exports in April-October, from USD 15,423 million last year versus USD 13,985 million this year.

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The fall has been led by wheat which registered a drop of 98 per cent, followed by milled products which registered a fall of 65 per cent and non-basmati rice, which registered a fall of 20 per cent year on year.

The retail prices of key agricultural produce such as rice, wheat and sugar have been on an upswing and have led the government take robust measures to arrest this price rise.

In the case of rice, the price rise has been to the tune of 11-12 percent on-year. In order to tame the same, the government has banned the export of all non-basmati white rice in July 2023.

The government has imposed a 20 per cent duty on the export of parboiled rice, initially till October 2023, which was then extended to March 2024.

According to Additional Secretary of Commerce Ministry, Rajesh Aggarwal, this step has led to better realizations for basmati and parboiled.

“We are noticing a growth of almost 20 percent in sales of these categories of rice due to increased prices as well as risen quantities. This will help reduce overall rice export deficit to some extent,” he said.

On Thursday itself, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution has notified that the government has offered 4 LMT wheat and 1.93 LMT rice as part of the 26th e-auction.

In the e-auction, 3.46 LMT wheat and 13164 MT rice was sold at a weighted average of Rs 2178.24/Qtl for wheat and Rs. 2905.40/Qtl for rice.

The government has also notified that further, w.e.f. the e-auction dated December 20, 2023, only 50 MT wheat is being allowed for bidders having LT electricity connection and 250 MT wheat for those having HT electricity connection.

This step has been taken to prevent the hoarding of stocks and to ensure that the wheat sold under OMSS (D) is being processed and release in the open market by the successful bidder.

The minimum and maximum quantity of rice that a bidder can bid has been fixed to 1 MT and 2000 MT respectively. The bidders can bid in multiples of 1 MT rice under OMSS (D). This step has been taken to enhance the sale of rice under OMSS (D) and in the present e-auction the sale of rice has increased to 13164 MT from 3300 MT that was sold in the previous e-auction.