Hyderabad, January 14: Concerned over escalating prices, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has initiated certain measures to bring down the prices of vegetables, onions and other essential commodities.
He directed the agriculture, marketing and civil supplies departments for market intervention scheme and told them that the prices of onions, vegetables, tamarind and other essential commodities should be brought down by procuring them and selling them at reasonable prices at rythu bazars.
The chief minister held a review meeting on prices, input subsidy distribution for farmers and paddy procurement with ministers and officials at the Secretariat here today. He directed the officials to supply vegetables at subsidised rates in two different family packages.
Package I @ `99 consisting of 1 kg each of tomato, potato, brinjal, carrot, cauliflower, cabbage, 250 gms of green chillies and 2 kg onions.)
Package 2 @ `49 consisting of 1 kg tomato, 550 gms each of potato, brinjal and carrot, 1 cauliflower, 1 cabbage, 1 kg onion, 250 gms of green chillies.
This facility would be provided to consumers in all rythu bazars in the twin cities and would be extended to all the districts.
As far as onions are concerned, the chief minister wanted the marketing department to procure them from the wholesale market and sell them at rythu bazars and mobile rythu bazars. Commissioner of the agriculture department informed that under crop loans `16,727.89 crore was disbursed as against the target of `473.55 crore during kharif season. Under agriculture term loans during kharif, Rs.5,046.47 crore was disbursed as against the target of `4,696.04 crore.
Under crop loans during rabi,
`5,752.34 crore was disbursed as against the target of `8,787.89 crore. Under agriculture term loans during Rabi, so far `736.45 crore was disbursed as against the target of `3,842.22 crore.
–Agencies