Don’t make a panic-sale below MSP, Jute Corporation of India alerts farmers

There are adequate orders for raw jute and farmers should not make a panic-sale below the minimum support price, MSP (Rs 5,050 per quintal on middle grade), the Jute Corporation of India has said.

Discarding rumours about insufficient government orders for jute, amidst good crop, Moloy Chandan Chakraborty, jute commissioner, and other senior officials of the JCI, in a press interaction in Kolkata on Tuesday, highlighted that farmers should not go for a panic-sale. 

Rather, if buyers in the open market attempt to purchase jute below the MSP then this should be brought to the notice of the authorities. The office of the jute commissioner, in a notification dated October 5, has said that raw jute cannot be purchased by mills below the declared rate in the notification. 

The Union government, earlier, declared that MSP rate for the middle grade jute – TD3 – is Rs 5,050 per quintal for the current corp year, July 2023 to June 2024. The rates for the crop year are applicable from July 1. 

Subsequent to the government declaration of MSP, the office of the jute commissioner announced the MSP rates for other varieties and grades. 

The farmers have an option to sell the produce to the buyers in the open market at the MSP, or at a higher rate, but can also avail the option of selling the same to JCI through its 110 purchase centres at MSP. On a given day, a farmer can offer up to 15 quintals of jute to any of the purchase centres, and in a season can sell up to 45 quintals.

During the current financial year, JCI’s procurement of raw jute stands at over 4.25 lakh quintals. In the current crop year, beginning July, this quantity is 3.70 lakh quintals. Besides its own godowns, 40 additional godowns are being utilised for the storage, at present.

Of the current crop year’s estimated produce (91 lakh bales), JCI has procured around four per cent jute so far. In the markets, an estimated 20-22 per cent of the current year’s produce has arrived, a senior JCI official told Deccan Herald.

Besides government orders – that consume a major chunk of jute – there’s a huge demand in the unorganised sector, the official added. Jute carpets, bag-manufacturing segment, to name a few, form a good demand.