Centre to offload 300,000 tn wheat for subsidised atta sale

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₹36.5 a kg, according to data from the consumer affairs ministry. India’s retail inflation accelerated to a 4-month high of 5.69% in December, driven by an uptick in food prices. Chopra said that the government aims to bring down prices in regions where the rates are higher than average.

Further, the government will continue selling atta till March to combat food inflation. However, it will depend on prices and requirements, he added. “In December, about 100,000 tonnes of wheat was offloaded as atta through three agencies—NAFED (National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd.), NCCF (National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India Ltd.) and Kendriya Bhandar.

We are hoping to offload about 300,000 tonnes more wheat as atta to consumers through these three agencies in January," Chopra told Mint in an interview. “So, in total, we are hoping about 400,000 tonnes of wheat will be offloaded to consumers as Bharat Atta in December and January," he said. If prices still remain elevated, the government will continue the scheme beyond January, up to February-March, depending on the requirement.

“DoCA (department of consumer affairs) collects rates from about 500 centres across the country. We try to find out a heat map, where the prices are higher in the centres compared to the average for that particular zone. So, under the Bharat atta scheme, the effort is to concentrate on those regions where the price of atta is higher than the average of that zone so that we can make a difference pointedly," Chopra explained.