Department of Consumer Affairs has put in place a portal to encourage various stockholders like stockists, millers, importers and dealers to enter the stocks
At least 11635 stockholders have registered to declare 3097694.42 MT of stock of pulses on the official portal of the Department of Consumer Affairs as of September 20, 2021.
The Department of Consumer Affairs under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution is monitoring the retail and wholesale prices of 22 essential food commodities. This is being achieved through various effective policy measures by the department such as curbing black marketing, increasing the availability by restricting the export and encouraging imports, building buffer stocks and ensuring timely release to ease abnormal price escalations.
In this connection, it was essential to tap the data of pulses available in the open market. Therefore, with the approval of the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Piyush Goyal, the department put in place a portal to encourage various stockholders like stockists, millers, importers and dealers to enter the stocks they are holding on any given date.
Stock declaration through traders, millers, importers and warehouses which are both public and privately owned will create a data bank. This will enable the government to understand which are the states that produce and stock for milling purposes. It will also help to keep a check on undesirable practices of hoarding and artificial scarcity creation through stock declaration and real-time verification of the same.
The portal – https://fcainfoweb.nic.in/psp – can also be accessed by any citizen. Stakeholders can register in the portal and create a user id and password after verification of email and mobile through OTPs. After the creation of user id and password, they share information in their profile by adding their details and geographic information and submit the variety of pulses they are having in their stock on any given date. It is the responsibility of the stakeholders to keep updating the data whenever there is an addition or subtraction in the stock. Privacy of data is maintained. The state governments can monitor the registrations done and stocks declared by various stakeholders pertaining to their own states.
