With rains playing truant this season, the government on Wednesday said there will be no export of foodgrains for at least one year.
"There are sufficient stocks at hand but basically we do not want to take risk with exports," Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in New Delhi.
He said for up to one year till the next monsoon there should be no export of wheat and ordinary rice.
The total foodstocks as on July one this year was 29.9 million tonne, including 19.152 million tonne wheat and 10.76 million tonne rice against a total buffer requirement of 24.3 million tonnes.
On the new export policy being framed by the commerce ministry, he said it pertained to all the food and agricultural items including dairy products and not grains alone.
"We are part of the preparation of the new policy for agricultural exports. In fact a meeting was held today in which representatives of food and agriculture ministry participated as well."
"As of today three months foodstocks requirement had been kept in states where there were symptoms of drought," he said.
While in Madhya Pradesh there were foodstocks for 3.5 months, in Rajasthan it was over six months and in Maharashtra the availability was little over 2.5 months.
In Andhra Pradesh, the total stocks were 932,000 tonne against a monthly requirement of 228,000 tonne, he said adding that only recently had the government taken up the biggest ever rail movement of foodgrains to meet any adverse eventuality.
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