Bhubaneswar, Feb 9: The State’s godown infrastructure is quite weak for paddy storage, there is neither ample cold storage units for of fruits, vegetables nor sufficient godowns, so the farming community have to go for distress sell of their produce at lower rates, a report by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has said . The State needs at least Rs 1,000 crore loan for accomplishing demands of storage facilities, said the State Focus Report released by NABARD.
It said out of the Rs 1,072.83 crore, Rs 468 crore is required for cold storages, Rs 486.88 crore for rural godowns, while Rs 4. 98 crore for modernisation of the rural godowns, Rs 34.13 crore for onion storage and Rs 68.64 crore for market place establishment is necessary for the State. Odisha produces 85 lakh tonnes of paddy annually and after meeting demands of the in house consumption, 51.12 lakh tonne of paddy is left over, while the State has only 36.71 lakh tonne capacity for storage so the 14.41 lakh tonne balance remains without storage, it also said.
For such a situation the agricultural community has nowhere to go instead of sellling their produce at low price to dealers. The State has only 24 cold storage units with a total capacity hold of 1.17 lakh tonnes out of which six cold storage units are operated by cooperative agencies and 18 by domestic agencies.
The State Government has decided to raise their capacity to 7.05 lakh tonnes by 2017-18 by establishing new 112 cold storage units, the report added.
