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Indian grain offer in limbo
KATHMANDU, APR 20 -
The plan for India to provide Nepal with rice, wheat and gram is in limbo due to technical and procedural delay on the part of Nepal.
With food insecurity risk growing, Nepal had requested India to resume export of these food products to Nepal during Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s visit to India last August.
On March 2, 2010, India offered to provide 25,000MT of non-basmati rice, 50,000 MT wheat and 10,000 gram to Nepal although Nepal’s demand was 200,000MT of rice, 50,000MT of wheat, 50,000MT of pulse.
India had also refused to provide sugar and semi-processed sugarcane as per Nepal’s demanded of 50,000MT and 5,000MT respectively, according to officials at the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies (MoCS).
Nepal is not satisfied with the Indian offer of rice as 25 percent of it will be in the broken form. On March 26, Nepal wrote to India asking for rice with maximum 15 percent in the broken form. “Nepalis hardly such quantity of broken rice,” said Surya Prasad Silwal, joint secretary at the MoCS.
According to him, India is yet to respond to the latest request by the government. But, a MoCS official said Indian embassy officials here are complaining that Nepal was offered rice as a gestured of goodwill despite the shortage of rice in India. The felt Nepal was being too demanding.
“We are waiting the Indian response to decide whether to initiate further process for rice import from India,” said Silwal. India has said that it will provide rice to Nepal through MMTC Limited, a state-owned entity of the Indian government at minimum market price.
Although rice import is delayed the big question is whether Nepal can address the food insecurity situation facing the country. The government predication is that paddy production will decline by 11.05 percent in the current fiscal year.
Regarding wheat imports, officials said they were assessing the country’s need as the harvesting season has already arrived. “We also have to decide who should be allowed to purchase wheat offered by India,” said Silwal. India will provide wheat through Food Corporation of India.
MoCS officials also complained that the yellow gram was not so popular in Nepal. That’s why, the government is yet to decide whether it will import such pulse or not.
Posted on: 2010-04-21 08:26
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