Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Aug 21: India has enough wheat to feed its population. This contradicts a Bloomberg report that claimed that grain imports may be necessary due to output cuts, rising prices, and a heatwave, according to the government.
“There is no such plan to import wheat into India. Country has sufficient stocks to meet our domestic requirements and @FCI_India (Food Corporation of India) has enough stock for pubic distribution,” the Department of Food and Public Distribution said on Twitter in response to the report.
There is no such plan to import wheat into India. Country has sufficient stocks to meet our domestic requirements and @FCI_India has enough stock for pubic distribution.
— Department of Food & Public Distribution (@fooddeptgoi) August 21, 2022
A representative for the food and commerce ministries declined to comment, according to news agency Bloomberg, while the Finance Ministry did not respond to a request for comment through email.
On Wednesday, India revised its estimate of wheat production upwards despite other forecasters and merchants revising downward their output estimates due to the heat wave.
According to the government’s most recent estimate made public by the farm ministry, the second-largest producer of grains in the world collected 106.84 million tonnes of wheat in 2022, a small increase over the previous prediction of 106.41 million tonnes.
The Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates India’s production at 99 million tonnes, but merchants believe the heatwave may have caused output to drop as low as 95 million tonnes.
On Wednesday, local wheat prices surged to a record high of $24,309 a tonne. With the government’s unexpected export embargo on May 14 ending hopes that India could replace the market gap left by missing grain from Ukraine, that was up nearly 15% from previous lows.
A Mumbai-based trader with a major international trading company claimed that the government’s reduced purchases of wheat and rising local prices are signs of a significant decline in production.
