Center’s food subsidy may decrease in the next financial year, read here

The government’s food subsidy in the previous year was 5.29 lakh crore.

“We’re expecting a little less than 4 lakh crore food subsidy this year,” Pandey said during a virtual press briefing.

The Food Secretary in his virtual meeting also mentioned that approx. Food subsidy of 2.25 lakh crore is estimated for the purchase and distribution of food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). 1.47 lakh crore has been spent to implement the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY).

Under NFSA, the central government currently provides food grains at highly subsidized rates. 1-3 per kg to more than 81 crore people through Public Distribution System (PDS).

Apart from subsidized food grains, the government is also supplying free food grains to NFSA beneficiaries under PMGKAY during the pandemic. This scheme has been extended several times and is now valid till March 2022.

During the financial year 2020-21, the government food subsidy was 5.29 lakh crore, another Food Ministry official said during the virtual press conference.

The secretary also said that the year 2021 was “an extraordinary year” for several reasons as the government made extraordinary efforts which were unprecedented in nature amid the circumstances of the pandemic.

One is that the state-owned FCI has made major changes and the ethanol blending program has also increased by 62 per cent this year. He said the blending of ethanol with petrol increased from 5 per cent to 8.1 per cent in a year, which is the highest ever.

Under ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ (ONORC), over 50 crore portable transactions have taken place, which 33,000 crore subsidy through food grains.

“You will be happy to know that during the pandemic period alone, more than 43 crore transactions have taken place with distributed food subsidies. 29,000 crores. It’s extraordinary,” he said.

In the current month alone, inter-state transactions have crossed 2 lakh and Delhi alone has 1.5 lakh transactions.

“Delhi which started very late but is registering one of the highest number of inter-state portable transactions through ONORC,” he said.

During the year, the Secretary said that PMGKAY has also been an exceptional program, with food grains distribution being in the range of about 93 per cent, which has provided much needed assistance to the poor across the country.