After Bharat atta and rice, here comes Bharat masur dal
NEW DELHI : After Bharat atta and rice, the Union government is planning to launch Bharat masur (lentil) dal – but, at around ₹89 per kg, without a discount – a senior official told Mint. Normally the Bharat brand comes with hefty discounts. The lentil pricing comes despite inflation being in control and with huge quantities of masoor lying in government stocks.
The all-India average retail price of masur dal was ₹93.5 a kg on Wednesday. “In the first phase, NAFED (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd) and NCCF (National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India Limited) will process and pack 25,000 tonnes of the pulse and it will be distributed through Kendriya Bhandar across the country," the official quoted above said. “The sales are expected to start from the first week of March once the modalities are ready." “Although masur dal prices are not high, we have decided to sell it under the ‘Bharat’ brand to make the basket bigger.
Hence, we will not offer masur dal at a discounted rate. We have decided to keep the price almost the same as the market peice at around ₹89 a kg," the official said. “We have around 720,000 tonnes of masur in our stock, mostly in the PSF (price stabilisation fund)." In the last calendar year, India imported about 3.1 million tonnes of pulses, half of it masur, mostly from Canada and Australia.
Bharat masur dal will be available in 1-kg packs. As part of its retail intervention to tame inflation, the government is selling Bharat rice at ₹29 a kg, Bharat atta at ₹27.50 per kg and Bharat dal (chana) at ₹60 per kg through NAFED, NCCF and Kendriya Bhandar. The number of retail points, including mobile vans and e-commerce sites, have been increased to nearly 18,000
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