New Delhi, May 2 - India has bought adequate quantity of rice and wheat from the local market and stocks of the staples will swell further, the head of the biggest official procurement agency said on Friday.
India, which imported wheat in the past two years, has banned exports of wheat and severely curtailed sales of rice to shore up domestic supplies and tame inflation, which has soared to a 3-1/2-year high and officials now say the granaries are brimming, ruling out imports.
"As of today, 15.4 million tonnes of wheat has been procured for the central pool," Alok Sinha, chairman and managing director of Food Corp, told a news conference.
"It is expected that we may mop up 17.5 million tonnes wheat," he said.
He said India was likely to exceed its target of buying 27 million tonnes of rice in the marketing year to September and had already purchased 23.2 million tonnes so far this year, which is 1.8 million million tonnes more than the same period a year ago.
India's bulging rice stocks offer no comfort to countries that face shortfalls.
Export curbs such as those in India and Vietnam have spooked importers like the Philippines and Bangladesh at a time when global stocks have halved from a record high in 2001.
An official from Thailand, the world's biggest rice exporter, said producers were also facing higher costs as prices of inputs like fertilisers had risen.
India, the world's second-biggest wheat producer, buys grains from local farmers for emergency needs and to feed the poor at lower rates. Government purchases also help farmers avoid distress sales.
"Wheat procurement has aleady surpassed the total procurement made in the last three years. We are going to buy more. We have the capacity to store up to 25 million tonnes wheat," Sinha said. Lower wheat purchases by the Food Corp of India, the custodian of foodgrains, in the last two years forced the country to import 5.5 million tonnes of the grain in 2006, for the first time in six years.
Last year, India bought 1.8 million tonnes of wheat.