Thaindian News

Chandigarh, Dec 10 (IANS) The biggest warehouse in the country to store food grain will be constructed in Punjab, a minister said here Saturday.

“Punjab has been permitted to construct a state of the art warehousing facility to store 42 lakh tonnes of grain, the largest ever storage capacity being created by any state in a single fiscal year,” Food and Supplies Minister Adesh Pratap Singh Kairon said.

“The union government has permitted us to go for scientific storage of wheat and Punjab has already initiated construction of warehousing facility for 42 lakh tonnes,” he said.

Punjab had been urging the central government to allow the setting up of more warehouses and silos for storing food grain since the existing infrastructure was overflowing with stocks of previous years and thousands of tonnes of food grain was rotting every year, leading to wastage.

Kairon said that Punjab, the food granary of the country, purchases 24 million tonnes of grain annually.

“This is even higher than the largest global food grain export countries of Canada and Russia that export 21 million tonnes and 20 million tonnes respectively per year,” he said.

“Being the largest producer of grain in the world puts an onus of responsibility of scientific storage and transportation of the grains to the end user in the larger interest of the country,” he added.

Punjab, known for producing wheat and paddy (rice) and contributing nearly 70 percent food grain to the national kitty, makes an annual payment of Rs.35,000 crore to farmers during the procurement season.