Over pricing by cold storage owners for facilities will not be tolerated: Dinesh Pratap Singh
Lucknow: Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Horticulture, Agricultural Marketing, Agricultural Foreign Trade and Agricultural Export, Dinesh Pratap Singh, while expressing his displeasure over the complaint of charging more storage charges by cold storage owners, directed that the storage charges of cold storage should be fixed in the mandate.
It should be determined according to the given arrangement. He instructed that cold storage owners should not increase the storage charges this year.
The Horticulture Minister along with Uttar Pradesh Cold Storage Association President Arvind Agarwal, in view of the difficulties faced in storage of potatoes in cold storages in the state and complaints of excessive potato storage charges by cold storage owners in some districts, after good potato production in the state discussed issues threadbare. It has been agreed by the office bearers of Uttar Pradesh Cold Storage Association to keep the rates of last year unchanged and not to make any increase. The state government is committed to protect the interests of potato growers and continuous efforts will be continued in this direction.
It is worth mentioning that potato has an important contribution in the state as a cash crop for the nutritional needs of the consumers, employment generation and economically.
Uttar Pradesh ranks first in potato production in India. About 35 percent of the country’s total production of potatoes is produced in Uttar Pradesh. In the year 2022-23, about 242.93 lakh MT production is possible in relation to the coverage of potato in about 6.94 lakh hectare area. Presently 1985 cold storages are operated for potato storage, whose storage capacity is 165.82 lakh MT. So far only 134.55 lakh metric tonnes of potatoes have been stored and the capacity of 31.27 lakh metric tonnes (18.86 per cent) is left for storage.
To ensure that the potatoes of the farmers are properly stored, divisional duty of all the high level officers was imposed and Horticulture Minister himself also visited several districts, only after meeting with the association, instructions were given.
