India News | Bihar Govt Committed to Ensuring MSP for Farmers' Produce: Min

Patna, Feb 21 (PTI) The Bihar government is committed to ensuring that farmers get minimum support price (MSP) for their food grains, a minister said on Wednesday.

To ensure this, e-procurement of paddy and wheat has been introduced, he said.

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Bihar Cooperative Minister Prem Kumar, while concluding a debate on the budget allocation for the state cooperative department for the 2024-25 fiscal in the assembly, said, "Small and marginal farmers play an important role in the overall development of the state. The NDA government in the state has taken several steps towards making ease of doing business easier for cooperatives as well as farmers."

"The state government has made the system transparent and effective by ensuring maximum decentralisation up to the panchayat level by involving PACS in the procurement process so that farmers don't have to run for selling their food grains at MSP," he added.

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The budgetary proposal of Rs 1,209 crore for the department was passed by a voice vote amid a walkout by the opposition members.

The state government is committed to ensuring that farmers get MSP for their food grains and for this purpose, e-procurement of paddy and wheat has been introduced, said the minister.

"In order to strengthen the Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS), the state government has already decided to develop them as Common Service Centres (CSC) which will provide 300 common services to rural people. Work to develop PACS as CSC has already started in the state," he said.

Commenting on this, Dipak Kumar Singh, Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Bihar Co-operative Department, said, "The state government is making all possible efforts for the welfare of the stakeholders associated with the cooperative sector, including farmers."

"Our co-operative banks in the state are continuously in profit and being the apex entity of the three-tier credit structure, is successfully implementing procurement and other co-operative schemes for the benefit of farmers and other stakeholders," he added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)