Increasing e-Nam footprint: With 38 new ‘mandis’ on board, Centre achieves target of 1,000 on online trading portal

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 11

With 38 additional ‘mandis’ integrated with the e-NAM platform, the Centre on Friday achieved the milestone of integrating 1,000 ‘mandis’ across 18 states and three union territories on the online trading portal, it said.

The 38 new mandis include Madhya Pradesh (19), Telangana (10), Maharashtra (4) and one each in Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir.

With these the total number of ‘mandis’ on the online portal, enabling farmers to sell without visiting regulated ‘mandis’, across the country is now 1,000.

With today’s addition, 37 ‘mandis’ in Punjab and 81 in Haryana are with e-NAM, a single window service for all APMC related information and services, including commodity arrivals, quality and prices, provision to respond to trade offers and electronic payment settlement directly into farmers’ accounts.

However, the reach so far has been limited to mostly non-perishable produce. Interstate transactions also remain an issue.

Sandip Das from ICRI (Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations) says when interstate trade is facilitated across all ‘mandis’ through e-NAM platform, farmers will get benefit of the price discovery mechanism.

“Traders and buyers would have to be provided with single license to conduct trade across ‘mandis’ in a state. With so many ‘mandis’ coming on board, the government should ensure seamless trading of agricultural commodities across states,” he adds.

Aiming to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities to promote uniformity in marketing by streamlining procedures, removing information asymmetry between buyers and sellers and promoting real time price discovery based on actual demand and supply, e-NAM remains the key focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to strengthen the sector amid the COVID-19 crisis, say officials.

Launched on April 14, 2016, in the COVID-19 scenario the platform is being used to transform trading of all farm-related commodities, including seeds, fertilisers and agro-chemical plant protection inputs.