India to import 50 lakh tonne wheat in one year : Pawar

Lucknow, Jun 16 (UNI) Claiming that the wheat procurement had been satisfactory during the current season, Union Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today said that the Centre would import 50 lakh tonnes of wheat in one year to maintain buffer stock in the country.

As compared to last year's figure of wheat procurement of 9.1 million tonne, this year various agencies had procured 108 lakh tonne of wheat. ''...still we need to import 50 lakh tonne to maintain the buffer stock,''he told reporters at the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) state office this afternoon.

The Union Minister was here on a day-long visit to attend a seminar on horticulture.

Ruling out any change in the existing Public Distribution System (PDS), Mr Pawar said there was no threat to PDS and food security in the country. The PDS did not warrant any change and would continue like before, he said.

The Union Food and Agriculture Minister was upbeat about the success of National Horticulture Mission set up under his ministry saying that it had done remarkably well in the past one year. The mission engaged itself to ensure an end-to-end holistic approach covering production, post harvest management, processing and marketing to assure appropriate returns to growers/producers.

He said that the budget of this ambitious centrally sponsored mission stood at Rs 2222 crore and for the past one year it had managed to enhance acreage, coverage, and productivity upto desired level.

As much as 4.5 lakh hectare of land had been brought under horticulture with misssion's endeavours helping the growers from pre-planation to produiction, processing, packaging and marketing of their products grown at orchards, vineyards, flower and vegetable gardens, the Minister said.

Mr Pawar said the mango belts of Lucknow and Pratapgarh promised good scope of mango export which was now open to countries like United States and Japan. ''Four varities of mango has been identified by the horticulturists for export and the Centre would speak with the officials of Uttar Pradesh for mango exports from the state,''he said.

UNI