Minister of State Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Shri C.R.Chaudhary has informed that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has decided to develop an online procurement system for registration of farmers and procurement of food grains. This system will send alerts through short message service (SMS) to the registered farmers on date of procurement, location of procurement centre, weight of food grains procured and details of online payment made to the farmer for his procured food grains. Thus, the system will enable FCI to track payment to farmers and bring transparency in grain procurement.
The Minister said that some states like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh have already started e-procurement of foodgrains. A national workshop on e-procurement was held at Bhopal on 5th & 6th April, 2016 in which 16 States had participated. States have been told to adopt the Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh model or develop their own systems for online procurement operations.
He said that it is envisaged that the online procurement system would be integrated into the FCI’s Depot Online System.