“We have spent, we have spent and we have spent” – But Where Madam FM?

Those of you who read me regularly would know that I look at the government budget more as a statement of financial accounts and not much as an actual policy document, as many people do.

The reason is simple. The government has an opportunity to do right policy 365 days a year. But the annual budget numbers are released only once a year.

Keeping this in mind, in this piece I will look at the massive fiscal deficit that the union government will run this year and try to  analyse it in different ways and try connecting it to what it means for the economy as a whole and the ability of the government to spend money.

We will also look at whether the government is spending more money in order to get the economy going, as it has claimed to.
Let’s take a look at this pointwise.

1) The fiscal deficit for 2020-21 is projected to be at 9.5% of the gross domestic product (GDP). This is the highest fiscal deficit figure between 1970-71 and now (The fiscal deficit data is available in the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy database from 1970-71 onwards). While this shouldn’t be surprising, the spread of the covid pandemic is not the only reason for it.

Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends and it is expressed as a percentage of GDP. Somehow, once expressed as a percentage of GDP, the fiscal deficit never sounds big enough.

In absolute terms, the fiscal deficit for this year is expected to be at Rs 18.49 lakh crore. Now that is one big number. Especially if you compare it to the fact that the fiscal deficit expected when the budget for this year was presented in February 2020, was Rs 7.96 lakh crore. The deficit turned out 132% more than what was forecast before the year began.

2) There is another interesting way to look at fiscal deficit. You might think that I am torturing numbers here and you are right to some extent, but I am only trying to show how big this fiscal deficit actually is.

Take a look at the following chart. It plots the fiscal deficit as a percentage of total government expenditure, over the years.

Source: Author calculations on data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.

What does this chart tell us? It tells us that in 2020-21, the fiscal deficit as a percentage of government expenditure will be at 53.6%. This is the highest ever level. Hence, a bulk of the government expenditure during 2020-21 will not be financed by its earnings. This tells us how high the fiscal deficit really is.

3) The question is why has the fiscal deficit jumped to such a high level? The simple answer is that the government hasn’t earned the total amount of tax it had projected, thanks to the spread of the covid pandemic. Let’s start with the net tax revenue or what is left after the government has shared the tax collected with the state governments.

The government expected to earn a net tax revenue of Rs 16.36 lakh crore this year, when the budget for this year was presented in February 2020.  It now hopes to earn Rs 13.45 lakh crore. This is Rs 2.89 lakh crore or 17.8% lower. This explains a part of the jump in the fiscal deficit from an expected level of Rs 7.96 lakh crore to Rs 18.49 lakh crore. But it still doesn’t give us the complete story.

4) In 2020-21, the government expected to earn a significant amount of money by selling or disinvesting its stakes in public sector enterprises. The amount it expected to earn through disinvestment was Rs 2.1 lakh crore. It has now been revised to just Rs 32,000 crore or 15.2% of the expected amount. There is gap of Rs 1.78 lakh crore here and this has also majorly pushed up the fiscal deficit.

The government’s excuse for this is covid. While, that might have been true for the first half of the year, it just doesn’t work for the second half of the year, when the stock market has gone from strength to strength and the government could easily have divested its stakes in public sector enterprises.

The only possible explanation here is that the government, as usual, has moved very very slowly on the procedural formalities required to disinvest its stakes in public sector firms.

5) A lower tax collection of Rs 2.89 lakh crore and lower disinvestment receipts of Rs 1.78 lakh crore, still only add up to around Rs 4.67 lakh crore and doesn’t totally explain the huge jump in the fiscal deficit.

There is a third major reason. I write about it in detail here. And I urge you click on this link and read it. I will offer a short summary here. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) buys rice and wheat directly from farmers at a minimum support price announced by the government. It then sells this rice and wheat through the public distribution system at a much lower price, in order to meet the needs of food security.

The government has to compensate the FCI for this difference. It does that by allocating money towards food subsidy in the budget. Over the years, the money allocated towards food subsidy has never been enough. In 2019-20, the FCI ‘s food subsidy bill was close to Rs 3.18 lakh crore. The government gave it Rs 75,000 crore.

Much of this gap was filled by FCI taking on loans from the National Small Savings Fund, where all the money collected under the various small savings schemes, ends up. As of March 2020, the FCI owed NSSF Rs 2.55 lakh crore.

The accounting jugglery over the years, essentially helped the government to declare a lower expenditure and hence, a lower fiscal deficit.

The government has now decided to end this and take on the total food subsidy offered by FCI as an expenditure. Hence, in February 2020, when the budget for this year was presented the allocation of food subsidy to FCI had stood at Rs 77,983 crore. It has now been revised to Rs 3.44 lakh crore. In fact, the overall food subsidy has been increased from Rs 1.16 lakh crore to Rs 4.23 lakh crore. This is a good thing that has happened because ultimately the main aim of the government budget is to present financial accounts as correctly as possible.

This has added Rs 3.07 lakh crore  (Rs 4.23 lakh crore minus Rs 1.16 lakh crore) more to the government expenditure and hence, to the fiscal deficit as well. Hence, the three reasons discussed up until now increased the fiscal deficit by Rs 7.74 lakh crore (Rs 2.89 lakh crore + Rs 1.78 lakh crore + Rs 3.07 lakh crore). This still doesn’t explain the total difference.

6) Other than taxes and disinvestment, the government also earns money under the heading non tax revenue. This includes dividends that the government earns from public sector enterprises, public sector banks, financial institutions like the Life Insurance Corporation of India and the dividend from the Reserve Bank of India. It also includes many other ways of making money.

The non tax revenue that the government had hoped to earn this year was Rs 3.85 lakh crore and it ended up earning Rs 2.11 lakh crore, which was Rs 1.74 lakh crore lower. This was primarily on account a massive fall in dividends earned.

If we add this to the earlier Rs 7.74 lakh crore, we get Rs 9.48 lakh crore. The fiscal deficit went up from a projected Rs 7.96 lakh crore to Rs 18.49 lakh crore primarily because of these four reasons.

Three of these reasons, lower tax collections, lower disinvestment receipts and lower non tax revenue, are on the earnings side. And one reason, higher food subsidy is on the expenditure side.

7) The finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her post budget interaction with the media said the government has spent a lot of money in order to get the economy going. The Business Standard reports her as saying, we have spent, we have spent and we have spent. The logic here is that in an environment where personal consumption has slowed down and industrial expansion is not happening, the government has to become the spender of the last resort, in order to get the economy going again.

The business media today is full of headlines around the government spending its way out of trouble. But do the budget numbers really reflect that?

Let’s try and see what the numbers tell us. The total government expenditure budgeted for 2021-22 is Rs 34.83 lakh crore. This is just a little more than the Rs 34.5 lakh crore the government expects to spend this year.

Here’s the interesting thing. In 2021-22, the government expects to spend Rs 8.1 lakh crore on paying interest on its outstanding debt. Once we adjust for this, the total government expenditure in 2021-22 stands at Rs 26.73 lakh crore (Rs 34.83 lakh crore minus Rs 8.1 lakh crore).

In 2020-21, the government expects to spend Rs 6.93 lakh crore on paying interest on its debt. Once we adjust for this, the total government expenditure in 2020-21 stands at Rs 27.57 lakh crore (Rs 34.5 lakh crore minus Rs 6.93 lakh crore).

Hence, the year on year, overall government spending next year will actually come down and not go up. Having said that, the capital expenditure in 2021-22 is budgeted to be at Rs 5.54 lakh crore, which is 26.2% more than the Rs 4.39 lakh crore, the government expects to spend in 2020-21. This is some good news, but doesn’t deserve the emphatic spend, spend, spend, statement.

The extra Rs 1.15 lakh crore (Rs 5.54 lakh crore minus Rs 4.39 lakh crore) works out to 0.5% of the GDP projected for 2021-22. While something is better than nothing, it clearly isn’t much.

8) What about the current financial year? The government plans to spend a total of Rs 34.5 lakh crore. This is 13.4% more than the Rs 30.42 lakh crore it had planned to spend when it presented the budget. Once we adjust for the fact the food subsidies have been properly accounted for and that has added Rs 3.07 lakh crore to the government expenditure, the actual expenditure goes down to Rs 31.43 lakh crore (Rs 34.5 lakh crore minus Rs 3.07 lakh crore). This is around 3.3% more than the amount budgeted of Rs 30.42 lakh crore, at the time of the presentation of the budget.

In fact, if we look at the food subsidy paid during April to December 2020, it amounts to Rs 1.25 lakh crore. With the budgeted amount being at Rs 4.23 lakh crore, close to Rs 3 lakh crore of food subsidy still remains unpaid. This will be paid during the last three months of 2020-21.

This money has already been spent by FCI and other agencies during this year and years gone by. Once FCI receives this money, it will pay off the money it owes to NSSF. Hence, there is really no extra spending happening here.

9) Now let’s compare, the spending in 2020-21 with that in 2019-20. The total expenditure in 2019-20 had stood at Rs 26.86 lakh crore. Once we take the increase in food subsidies out, the total expenditure in 2020-21 stands at Rs 31.43 lakh crore (Rs 34.5 lakh crore minus Rs 3.07 lakh crore). The spending in 2020-21 is thus around 17% more than the last financial year. But much of it was budgeted for in February 2020, when the budget for this year was first presented.

Hence, the increase in spending in 2020-21, or the fiscal stimulus as economists like to call it, hasn’t been because of the covid pandemic, it was happening anyway.

To conclude, it is clear that the government is not spending more in 2021-22 on the whole, though there is some increase in capital expenditure and that’s good. In 2020-21, the government has actually spent more, but then much of it was planned before covid and not after it.

It also tells us that once we take the real fiscal deficit into account, there isn’t much that the government can do to spend its way out of trouble. The good thing is that the government has decided to clean up its books. And that will have repercussions on the total amount of money it is able to spend during the course of this year and the next. The mistakes that we make in our past always come back to haunt us.

Dear Reader, clearly this piece should tell you how nuanced numbers can get, if one decides to dig a little deeper. Of course, you won’t get such a nuanced reading of the budget numbers anywhere in the mainstream media.

Hence, it is important that you continue supporting my work.

Forget Grains On Subsidy, India’s Poor Can Really Do with the Cash Instead

rot-in-the-fci-godowns

In the column dated July 21, 2016, I had said that the Food Security Act does not really provide “food security” to the citizens of this country. And given that nearly three years have passed after the passage of the Act, it is time that the government took a relook at the functioning of this Act.

In case you haven’t read the piece that appeared on July 21, 2016, I suggest you do that, before getting around to reading this one.

Other than the fact that the Food Security Act does not provide food security, there is also a lot of wastage of rice and wheat that are distributed to the citizens of this country under the Act.

The food grains are distributed using the network of around 5,00,000 fair price shops located all over the country. The trouble is that this network is extremely leaky. Economists Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini calculate this leakage in a research paper titled Leakages from the Public Distribution System and the Way Forward.

In this research paper Gulati and Saini calculate the total amount leakage through the public distribution system. The union government supplies rice and wheat to states and union territories in order to meet the grain distribution commitments under the Food Security Act. Over and above the normal allocations, ad-hoc allocations are also made.

Further, the state wise monthly per capita consumption of rice and wheat is also available. This is used to calculate the consumption numbers of rice and wheat for every state. As Gulati and Saini point out: “The grains off-taken by each state gives the total grain supply in the year and the consumption figures give how much is received by the targeted consumer. The excess of what is supplied over what is consumed should reflect the extent of leakage of grain from the system. Our calculations show that in 2011-12, 25.9 MMTs or 46.7 per cent of the off-taken grain leaked from the public distribution system.” Hence, a little less than half of the grains distributed through the public distribution system do not reach those who they are meant for.

In fact, in 15 states, the leakage was more than 50 per cent. This included: Delhi (82.6 per cent), Gujarat (72.2 per cent), Haryana (70.3 per cent), West Bengal (69.4 per cent), Bihar (68.7 per cent) and Punjab (60.7 per cent). In fact, in some North Eastern states, like Nagaland and Manipur, the leakages were as high as 95 to 97 per cent. In absolute numbers, Uttar Pradesh comes at the top of the list. This is followed by West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Other estimates suggest that the leakage of the public distribution system is anywhere between 40 per cent to 54 per cent. Hence, the point is that the leakage of the public distribution system run through the five lakh fair price shops, is excessive. It means that a major portion of the food grains distributed through these shops does not reach the intended beneficiaries.

As the Report of the High Level Committee on Reinventing the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India (better known as the Shanta Kumar committee report) points out: “Leakages don’t happen in a vacuum. There is connivance at several levels, breeding corruption. It is now time to think out of the box and find some alternative policy solutions that can plug such large scale leakages and associated corruption, and that can ensure that benefits reach directly to the neediest.”

And how can this be done? The answer lies in giving cash directly to the beneficiaries of the Food Security Act. There is this great belief among the well-off that giving money directly to the poor will mean that the men will simply drink it away. This argument only sounds true because it plays on a stereotype of the poor being poor because they waste their time drinking.

Nevertheless, as economist Joseph Halon points out: “Poverty is fundamentally about a lack of cash. It’s not about stupidity.” (Source: Rutger Bergman’s Utopia for Realists). Hence, if poor do get money under an unconditional cash transfer scheme, they don’t waste it on alcohol and tobacco. In fact, there is enough research from all over the world that proves that.

As Rutger Bergman writes in Utopia for Realists: “The great thing about money is that people can use it to buy things they need instead of things that self-appointed experts think they need. And, as it happens, there is one category of product which poor people do not spend their free money on, and that’s alcohol and tobacco. In fact, a major study by the World Bank demonstrated that 82% of all researched cases in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, alcohol and tobacco consumption actually declined.”

In fact, such an experiment has happened in Delhi as well, and the results were along similar lines. As Gulati and Saini point out: “It is worth noting that a study by the Government of Delhi and SEWA, under the GNCTD-UNDP project, tested the effects of substituting PDS rations by cash transfers for BPL families in a west Delhi region in the year 2011. It found that the consumption of the studied food items did not fall, and interestingly, the consumption of items like pulses, eggs, fish and meat went up. Contrary to expectations, the alcohol consumption did not increase; rather, the efficiency of PDS shops surely increased!

The Food Security Act just distributes rice and wheat at subsidised prices. A nutritious meal is about consuming other food items as well. By giving cash directly to families, families can decide what is best for them. In fact, by moving to cash transfers, the country can save close to Rs 33,087 crore, Gulati and Saini calculate, and that is clearly a lot of money. This money can be better utilised elsewhere.

Given this, the Shanta Kumar committee has recommended that cash transfers should be introduced by starting with the “large cities with more than 1 million population; extending it to grain surplus States, and then giving option to deficit States to opt for cash or physical grain distribution.” The Committee has also said that the “cash transfers can be indexed with inflation” and “given to the female head of the family”.

The trouble is that the infrastructure that allows the government to do this (Jan Dhan bank accounts seeded with Aadhar numbers) is not yet ready. The sooner this gets ready, the better it will be for the nation as a whole.

The column originally appeared in Vivek Kaul’s Diary on July 28, 2016

Dear Mr Modi who will sort out the mess at Food Corporation of India?

narendra_modi
Data released by the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell(PPAC) suggests that on January 13, 2016, the price of Indian basket of crude oil touched $27.32 per barrel. I expect the government to increase the excise duty on petrol and diesel soon, to capture the benefit of this ‘further’ fall in the price of oil.

If and when this happens this will be the eight such rise since November 2014. While the government has been quick to increase excise duty on petrol and diesel in order to shore up its finances, the same enthusiasm has been missing when it comes to controlling wasteful expenditure.

Let’s take the case of the Food Corporation of India(FCI). Last week the Supreme Court was hearing a case concerning the loaders at FCI and the exorbitant salaries they draw. As the judges reacted: “The report shows that in August 2014, 370 labourers received more than Rs 4 lakh in salary. Around 400 others got between Rs 2 lakh and 2.5 lakh in the same month…How is that possible?

The judges were essentially referring to the Report of the High Level Committee on Reinventing the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India (better known as the Shanta Kumar committee report). This report was released in January 2015.

In fact, as the Shanta Kumar committee report points out: “Some of the departmental labours (more than 300) have received wages (including arrears) even more than Rs 4 lakhs/per month in August 2014. This happens because of the incentive system in notified depots.

Interestingly, even those who did not get paid Rs 4 lakh in August 2014, get paid quite a lot. The average salary of an FCI worker was Rs 79,588 per month between April and November 2014, which is seven to eight times higher than what a contract labourer gets paid. As can be seen from the following table the average salary of a worker has more than doubled between 2009 and 2014.

Financial yearAverage Salary
2009-1038459
2010-1153389
2011-1263763
2012-1371358
2013-1478549
April to Nov 201479588
Source: Shanta Kumar Committee Report

As the Shanta Kumar committee report points out: “FCI engages large number of workers (loaders) to get the job of loading/unloading done smoothly and in time. Currently there are roughly 16,000 departmental workers, about 26,000 workers that operate under Direct Payment System (DPS), some under no work no pay, and about one lakh contract workers. A departmental worker (loader) costs FCI about Rs 79,500/per month (Apri-Nov 2014 data) vis-a-vis DPS worker at Rs 26,000/permonth and contract labour costs about Rs 10,000/per month.”

There are a few points that need to be made here. First, is the fact that workers are paid different wages depending on how they are categorised, even though the do the same work. Hence, an FCI worker gets paid eight times that a contract worker gets paid. This is not fair.

The second point is why pay workers close to Rs 80,000 per month for loading and unloading stuff, when the same job can be carried out at the cost of Rs 10,000 or Rs 26,000 per month? This is a clear waste of money. The Supreme Court judges put the loss at Rs 1800 crore. This doesn’t sound much on its own, given the big numbers we are used to when we talk about the government.

But compare this with the plan outlay of the ministry of environment for 2015-2016, which is at Rs 1,446.60 crore. As the budget document points out: “The Plan outlay of Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change is Rs 1,446.60 crore. An Amount of Rs 758.16 crore is allocated for Ecology and Environment which, inter alia, includes Rs 63.14 crore Conservation of Natural Resources and Ecosystems, and Rs 213.05 crore for Research and Development, Rs 100 crore for National Coastal Management Programme and Rs 76.10 crore for Environmental Monitoring and Governance.  Rs 150 crore has been provisioned for National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change.”
The point being there are better ways of spending money than paying an FCI worker Rs 79,500 per month.

Also, it is not surprising that those making Rs79,500 per month or more, get cheaper contract labour to do their work. If I was earning Rs 4 lakh per month and was in a position to outsource my work to someone at the cost of Rs 10,000 per month, I would do the same thing.

As the Shanta Kumar committee report points out: “Some of the departmental labours (more than 300) have received wages (including arrears) even more than Rs 4 lakhs/per month in August 2014. This happens because of the incentive system in notified depots, and widely used proxy labour. This is a major aberration and must be fixed, either by de-notifying these depots, or handing them over to states or private sector on service contracts, and by fixing a maximum limit on the incentives per person that will not allow him to work for more than say 1.25 times the work agreed with him. These depots should be put on priority for mechanization so that reliance on departmental labour reduces.”

The Supreme Court judges have given the government a time of 10 days to respond on how this daylight robbery of the country can stop. “Labourers in FCI have an aggressive past. Officers have been murdered. There is a clique that is operating there and FCI has become a hen that lays golden eggs for them. The FCI is literally held to ransom by the labourers and their unions and there is something seriously wrong with it,” the Supreme Court judges said.

The prime minister Narendra Modi before he became the prime minister talked a lot about “minimum government maximum governance”. This is one area where the slogan can be put into practice. The loot of the nation by a few thousand workers of the FCI needs to stop. The money thus saved needs to be put to better use.

The question is will this stop? The trouble is that after being elected Modi has continued with the maximum government handed down to him. Any elected official (or for that matter even any individual) has limited time and mind-space to tackle things. This is even more true for this government, where the lack of ministerial talent is glaringly obvious and the government is run more and more by the prime minister’s office.

The prime minister’s office is busy with many things, propping up loss making units like Air India and MTNL, being among them. In this environment does it have the time and the mind-space to tackle the mess that FCI is in?

The column originally appeared in the Vivek Kaul’s Diary on Equitymaster

Less than 5.8% of farmers benefit from the minimum support price system

agriculture

Towards the end of April, the Parliament’s Committee on agriculture made a rather bizarre commendation to the government. “The committee urged that steps should be taken to fix remunerative pricing with 50% profit margin over cost of production for all the 24 crops without any further delay as recommended by this committee,” the committee said.
What does mean? The committee has basically recommended that the government should ensure that the minimum support prices that it declares for various agricultural crops should give the farmers a profit of 50% over their cost of production. The government declares minimum support prices for 24 agriculture crops which include rice paddy, wheat, jawar, bajra, maize, ragi, pulses, oilseeds, copra, cotton, jute, sugarcane, and tobacco.
Even though it declares the minimum support price for 24 crops it primarily buys only rice and wheat from farmers through the Food Corporation of India(FCI) and other state procurement agencies.
Why do I say that the suggestion of the Parliament’s Committee on agriculture is bizarre? The answer to this question lies in the
Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India (better known as the Shanta Kumar Committee Report). The report makes some interesting points using data from the 70th Round of NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation) on The Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households.
As per this survey there are 90.2 million agricultural households in India. From this, during the period July to December 2012, only 18.67 million households reported selling paddy. Of this number only 13.5% sold to a procurement agency (i.e. either FCI or other state procurement agencies). This essentially means that only 2.52 million households sold paddy to the procurement agency. Of this who sold to a procurement agency only 27% of their sales were at the minimum support price.
Between January and June 2013, 5.46 million households reported selling paddy. Of this only 10% or 0.55 million households sold to a procurement agency. And of those who sold to a procurement agency only 14% of their sales were at the minimum support price.
The situation is similar when it comes to wheat. As per the survey, between January and June 2013, 13 million households reported the sale of wheat, but only 16.2% reported to have sold wheat to a procurement agency. Of those who sold to a procurement agency, only 35% of their sales happened at the minimum support price.
So what does this mean? The total number of agricultural households who were able to sell rice paddy and wheat to the procurement agencies works out to 5.21 million. As the Shanta Kumar Committee Report points out: “The number of households comes to just 5.21 million (2.55 million paddy households during July-Dec 2012; 0.55 million paddy households during Jan-June, 2013; and 2.11 million wheat households during Jan-June 2013).”
The figure of 5.21 million forms 5.8% of the total number of agricultural households of 90.2 million. In fact, this number is also on the higher side once one takes into account the fact that there are households that sell both paddy and wheat to the procurement agencies. Further, as mentioned earlier not all wheat and paddy is being sold to procurement agencies at the minimum support price.
After taking these factors into account, the number of direct beneficiaries from the minimum support price announced by the government and the procurement system set up to buy paddy and wheat, comes out to be even lower than 5.8% of the agricultural households.
As the Shanta Kumar Committee Report puts it: “The direct benefits of procurement operations in wheat and rice, with which FCI is primarily entrusted, goes to a miniscule of agricultural households in the country.”
Further, the procurement benefits large farmers in a few selected states like Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and lately from Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Large farmers are the luckiest of the lot—they have a ready made customer in the form of the government for what they produce and they don’t need to pay any income tax either. What muddles the situation further is that in some states, the procurement agencies buy nearly 70-90% of the wheat and rice and literally crowd out the private sector.
This crowding out leads to food prices going up.
Food inflation hurts the poor the most. Half of the expenditure of an average Indian family is on food. In case of the poor it is 60% (NSSO 2011). What Rahul and the Congress party need to understand is that everyone associated with agriculture does not own land. As per the draft national land reforms policy which was released in July 2013, nearly 31% of all households in India were supposed to be landless. The NSSO defines landlessness as a situation where the area of the land owned is less than 0.002 hectares.
Any price rise, particularly a rise in food prices which is what an increase in MSP leads to, hurts this section of the population the most. Didn’t the Parliament committee on agriculture consider this, before making the recommendation that it did? If yes, why do they want to make things difficult for a major section of the population, by recommending what they have? Or are MPs too close to large farmers that benefit the most from rising minimum support prices?
The grain bought by the government is sold through the public distribution system (PDS). This grain is sold at extremely subsidized prices. Rice is sold at Rs 3 per kg and wheat is sold at Rs 2 per kg. The trouble is that the PDS is terribly leaky. As per NSSO 2011 the PDS leakage is 46.7%. This means that of every 100 kgs of grain distributed through the PDS, 46.7 kgs hits the open market. This is not surprising given the huge gap in prices between grain sold through the PDS and that sold in the open market. In fact, in some states the leakage is as high as 70-90%.
And this led the Shanta Kumar Committee to ask: “Given such large leakages, one must question the reasons behind this, and whether it is worth keeping FCI pouring grains into a system that fails to deliver.”
To conclude, the question to ask is—what is the point in keeping such a wasteful system going? The trouble is that its become too much of a holy cow for the government to do anything about.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on May 12, 2015

Government of India must stop hoarding food

 rot-in-the-fci-godowns

Vivek Kaul

Food inflation has been an issue of huge concern over the last few years. In a recent report titled What a waste! Crisil Research points out that “food inflation has averaged 8.1% in the last decade, and over 10% in recent times.”
This when agricultural growth has been robust and our granaries continue to overflow. Agricultural growth over the last decade stood at 3.6% per year, in comparison to 2.9% per year, in the decade before that. Hence, the conventional argument that food inflation is a result of not enough supply in comparison to demand, doesn’t totally hold.
The Food Corporation of India (FCI) puts out a number indicating its food grains stock every month. As on June 1, 2014, the food grain stock, which includes rice, wheat, unmilled paddy and coarse grains, stood at 74.8 million tonnes. At the beginning of June 2008, the stock had stood at 36.4 million tonnes.
This indicates that the government through FCI has bought and hoarded more and more of rice and wheat produced in the country. In a May 2013 research report titled Buffer Stocking Policy in Wake of NFSB (National Food Security Bill) written by Ashok Gulati and Surbhi Jain of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices(CACP) it was estimated that anywhere between 41-47 million tonnes, would be a comfortable level of buffer stocks.
This would be enough to take care of the subsidised grain that needs to be distributed to implement the food security scheme. At the same time it would also take care of the strategic reserves that the government needs to maintain, to be ready for a drought or any other exigency.
The current level of food grains with the FCI is significantly more than 41-47 million tonnes. One impact of this is that the government spends money in buying the “extra grain” which it does not require. This adds to the government expenditure and in turn the fiscal deficit. The fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends. The CACP authors had estimated that an excess stock of 30-40 million tonnes would cost the government anywhere between Rs 70,000 to Rs 92,000 crore.
The main reason for this “extra procurement” is the fact that the Congress led UPA government kept increasing minimum support price(MSP) of food grains over the years, at a fast pace. In 2005-2006, the MSP for common paddy(rice) was Rs 570 per quintal. By 2013-2014 this had shot up to Rs 1310 per quintal, an increase in price of around 11% per year. In comparison, between 1998-1999 and 2005-2006, the MSP of rice had increased at the rate of 3.8% per year.
In case of wheat the MSP has gone up by 14% per year between 2005-2006 and 2013-2014. In comparison, between 1999-2000 and 2005-2006, the price had gone up by 4% per year.
In fact, the decision to increase the MSP was totally random. A report released by the Comptroller and Auditor General in May 2013 pointed out that “No specific norm was followed for fixing of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) over the cost of production. Resultantly, it was observed the margin of MSP fixed over the cost of production varied between 29 per cent and 66 per cent in case of wheat, and 14 per cent and 50 per cent in case of paddy during the period 2006-2007 to 2011-2012.”
Other than the government expenditure shooting up, the rapid increase in MSP has led to more and more food grains landing up with the government. The FCI does not have enough storage capacity for this grain. This is one reason why newspapers frequently carry pictures of food grains rotting, lying in the open. “Between 2005 and 2013, close to 1.94 lakh tonnes of food grain were wasted in India, as per FCI’s own admission in the Parliament,” the Crisil report points out. Rice formed 84% of the total damage.
Further, the excess procurement has also led to high inflation, as a lower amount of rice and wheat have landed up in the open market. The CAG report points out that in 2006-2007, 63.3 million tonnes of rice landed in the open market. By 2011-2012, this had fallen by a huge 23.6% to 48.3 million tonnes. The same is true about about wheat as well, though the drop is not as pronounced as it is in the case of rice. In 2006-2007, the total amount of wheat in the open market stood at 62.1 million tonnes. By 2011-2012, this had dropped to 61.4 million tonnes.
Also, with MSPs going up every year at a rapid rate, “the cropping pattern” the Crisil report points out “has been biased towards food grains like rice and wheat, and have led to excessive production”.
Given this, one way of bringing down food inflation is the government releasing stocks of rice and wheat into the open market. One problem here can be that the procurement is concentrated in a few states. In case of wheat these states are Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. And in case of rice, these states are Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Punjab. Hence, stocks will have to be moved from these parts of the country to other parts. More than that the government needs to stop procuring more than what it needs to run its various programmes. This will be beneficial from the fiscal deficit front as well as help moderate inflation.
This becomes even more important given that the India Meteorological Department expects the monsoon to be below normal at 93 per cent of the long period average. In this scenario, the production of grains is expected to take a hit. If the government continues with excess procurement, less grains will land up in the open market and push prices further up.
Also, when it comes to production of food products like milk, milk products, egg, fish and meat, supply has been lagging demand. The production has risen only at the rate of 3-4% between 2009-2010 and 2012-2013, whereas the price has risen at the rate of 14-15%, the Crisil report points out. This needs to be addressed.
When it comes to fruits and vegetables, the Agricultural Product and Market Committee(APMC) Act was passed to help farmers. Instead, it has made them vulnerable to traders backed by political parties. The huge increase in price of onion last year, despite a small fall in production is an excellent example of the same. The trader cartels need to be broken down.
These steps need to be taken if food inflation has to be controlled in the time to come.

 The article originally appeared in The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle on June 17, 2014

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He can be reached at [email protected]