The Hindu Business Line : Wheat imports

New Delhi, Sept. 23 The last time when the Centre diluted its plant quarantine standards and opened the door for large-scale wheat imports, the public godowns had less than half the required quantity of grain. On July 1, 2006, wheat stocks in the Central pool, at 82.07 lakh tonnes (lt), stood below the recommended minimum buffer of 171 lt for that date. Moreover, international prices were on the rise, with the all-time-high of $13.495 a bushel ($495.85 a tonne) at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) touched on February 27, 2008.

As a result, between the time when the State Trading Corporation floated its first and last tenders – February 2006 to December 2007 – the landed price of the contracted wheat soared from $178.75 to $400.19 a tonne. During 2006-07, 53.79 lt of wheat were imported at an average cost of $205.34 a tonne. the succeeding year saw 18.44 lt contracted at an average $366.83 a tonne.

Conditions have changed substantially since then. CBOT wheat is currently trading at around $4.5 a bushel or $165 a tonne. That makes imported wheat much cheaper.Moreover, unlike three years ago, public wheat stocks at the start of July this time amounted to 329.22 lt – almost twice the normative minimum buffer.

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