Punjab MP Vikramjit Singh Sahney to meet Piyush Goyal over rice MEP

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 14

Rajya Sabha MP Vikramjit Singh Sahney will lead a delegation of MPs from Punjab to meet Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal to seek his intervention in rationalising Minimum Export Price (MEP) on rice, which has been fixed at $1,200, adversely impacting exports from India.

Sahney, along with the office-bearers of the Basmati Exporters Association, took up the matter with Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal and Chief Minister Punjab Bhagwant Mann during an Industrial interaction meeting “Sarkar Sanatkar Milni” in Amritsar today, urging them to make efforts to resolve the issue. The Chief Minister authorised Sahney to take a delegation and meet Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

Bhagwant Mann on his part will also write a demi-official (DO) letter to Goyal, urging for relaxation in the rice export norms, claimed a press statement by Sahney.

Vikramjit Singh Sahney has also shot off a letter to the Union Minister, mentioning that the total production of basmati in India is six million tonnes and of non-basmati is 135.54 million tonnes for 2022-23. On one hand, there is no restriction on export of non-basmati parboiled which means a variety of $300 per tonne is allowed to be exported with a duty of 20%.

Whereas 1509 basmati parboiled rice, which is a higher priced variety of rice, is not allowed for exports. If lower priced variety of rice will go out of India and higher price will be restricted, then the agenda of controlling prices will fail, wrote Vikramjit Singh Sahney.

Sahney said that Basmati rice is not procured by Government of India under public distribution system (PDS) system and since a miniscule 2-3% of population consumed this high-priced commodity, it does not in any way impinge upon the retail food inflations in the country.

Do away with curb: BJP leader

Punjab BJP vice-president and former state health minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Thursday urged the Central Government to immediately withdraw the minimum price condition of $1200 per tonne on basmati exports. He said if traders were not getting orders for basmati export, then it was clear that in coming days its prices would fall in the market.

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