The recent delisting of fruit and vegetables means that farmers no longer have to visit Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMC) to sell their fresh produce. Now, more farmers are venturing into direct marketing and successfully managing to keep the supplies up in cities such as Mumbai and Pune.
Buoyed with this positive development, the state government of Maharashtra is now in the process of reducing both the bank guarantees and licence fee to allow for more farmer-producer companies and farmers groups to get into direct marketing. This the government hopes will create for an alternate channel to the existing marketyards for trade of fruits and vegetables.
The state government plans to bring down substantially the present bank guarantee of Rs 1-1.5 million and licence fee of Rs 15-50,000. “This will allow for more farmer-producer companies and farmers’ group to get in the race. Plans are to bring down the rates substantially but to retain it to a level, which will act as deterrent for non-serious players,” said a senior officer from the directorate of marketing. The state has around 100-odd direct marketing licence holders with majority of them in the vegetables and fruits trade.
While there are around 700-odd FPOs in the state, very few are in the direct marketing scenario. Most of them act as aggregators and sell the produce to commission agents or traders. Reduction of the fees is expected to bring many of them in the direct selling mode as well. Both the MSAMB and the directorate of marketing have plans to hand hold the interested farmers groups and farmer producer companies to make their way inside the retail trade net in Mumbai and Pune.
(1 Indian Rupee=0.015USD)
Source: indianexpress.com
