BJP apprehends wheat imports this year also

New Delhi, Apr 20 (UNI) Accusing the UPA government of faltering once again in wheat procurement, the BJP today cautioned that the the country will have to depend on wheat imports this year also paying huge sums of money to farmers of western countries.

BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said the procurement so far was 36 lakh tonnes upto April 17, lower than 56 lakh tonnes procured last year. If previous years procurements were not enough to deter wheat imports to supply food grains to the poor through the Public Distribution System (PDS) the country had to import heavily.

The government, he said deliberately kept the Minimum Support Price (MSP) at Rs 850 a quintal to aid procurement by the private producers who were offering marginally higher prices than offered by the government. If the government were to fix a higher MSP, it would help the domestic farmers to get better returns for their produce as a major wheat producer like Australia was experiencing a bad crop this year.

UNI