New Delhi, April 2 (PTI) The government on Thursday launched new features in electronic agriculture market platform (e-NAM), enabling direct trading from warehouses as well as collection centres of farmers producers organisations (FPOs) as part of its effort to decongest wholesale markets amid coronavirus threat.

"Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar launched two new features of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) Platform to strengthen agriculture marketing by farmers which will reduce their need to physically come to wholesale mandis for selling their harvested produce," an official statement said.

The features have been launched at the time when there is a critical need to decongest mandis to effectively fight against COVID-19, it added.

The first one, warehouses-based trading modules in e-NAM software will facilitate trade from warehouses as per the e-NWR (electronic negotiable warehouse receipt).

The other one is FPO trading module in e-NAM where by FPOs can trade their produce from their collection centre without bringing the produce to APMC.

"In addition to facilitate inter-mandi and inter-state trade at this juncture, enhanced version of the logistic module has been released whereby aggregators of transport logistic platform have on boarded which helps users to avail trackable transport facilities for transporting their produce," the statement said.

Speaking on the occasion, Tomar reiterated that e-NAM was launched on 14 April 2016 as a pan India electronic trade portal linking APMCs across the states.

Already 585 mandis in 16 States and two Union Territories have been integrated on e-NAM portal.

He also said the e-NAM will be soon expanded to cover an additional 415 mandis, which will take the total number of e-NAM mandis to 1,000.

Tomar highlighted that the e-NAM provides for contactless remote bidding and mobile-based payment system.

(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)