Informist, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025

By Afra Abubacker

NEW DELHI – The Food Corp. of India sold 771,000 tonnes rice as of Thursday through auctions under the open market sale scheme for 2025-26 (Apr–Mar), data from the corporation showed. To offload surplus rice, FCI is holding auctions twice a week on Wednesday and Thursday, the official added.

FCI is offering around 100,000-150,000 tonnes rice at each auctions, however, offtake remains poor at 20,000-30,000 tonnes, data showed. Demand for rice has been poor amid comfortable availabilty of the grain across the country.

As of Aug. 1, rice stocks in the central pool were up 16% on year at 38.0 million tonnes, the highest in two decades for the month. The government has been grappling with surplus rice stocks due to its open-ended procurement policy. In addition, paddy cultivation has been on the rise amid incentives like high minimum support prices and additional state bonuses for the grain. However, FCI has been struggling to sell what it procured.

For the upcoming kharif marketing season 2025-26 (Oct-Sept), the government has set a procurement target of 46.35 million tonnes of rice, slightly lower than 48.5 million tonnes last year. The Centre will reduce the percentage of broken rice in its procurement to 10% from the current 25% starting October, according to Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra.

Though the ongoing paddy cultivation has increased from last year, the recent heavy rains and subsequent floods in Punjab has raised concerns over production. Farmers have sown paddy over 43.2 million hectares as of Friday, up 6.6% from last year. End

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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