Agricultural ministry urges state governments to ease off regulations

Even after seven years of its launch in 2016, the trade on Electronic-National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) is much less than the total trade of agricultural commodities.

Union agriculture ministry has asked state governments to ease up regulations so as to widen the outreach of Electronic-National Agriculture Market (e-NAM). The Ministry suggested state governments to relax norms and facilitate traders from outside their states to buy and sell commodities without bank guarantee, issuing of unified license for seamless statewide trade access and procurement at farm gate.

According to an official from agriculture ministry, “Bank guarantee by traders buying commodities from outside the state was introduced as a safety net, but with the facility of online payment before the goods leave the mandi yard, it has become redundant.” The traders are not inclined to block the sum of money as bank guarantee as per the current practice prior to actual sales, he added.

Currently, there exist three conditions for states to join the e-NAM. They are, unified state license; single point levy of market fee; and provision of electronic trading as a mode of price discovery. The states continue to be hesitant to implement reforms in their Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act, in order to join the national platform.

According to the Agriculture ministry, about Rs. 2.79 trillion worth of trade has been recorded on e-NAM platform, ever since it was launched seven years ago. However, compared to the total trade in agricultural products, the trade on e-NAM is much less (excluding milk and marine products where estimated trade is worth Rs 6 trillion).

The ministry informed that about 1361 APMCs had been integrated with e-NAM covering 27 states and union territories for allowing farmers to sell their produce on pan India platform. The agriculture ministry has approved integration of 25 new mandis – Maharashtra (15), Jammu and Kashmir (6) and Uttarakhand (4) into the platform.