Government to discontinue Bharat brand products as food prices stabilise
The government has decided to discontinue
Bharat brand products
as prices of essential food items such as wheat, rice and pulses have stabilised, with food inflation falling to 1.78% in April from 8.7% a year ago.
With this, the Centre has made the Bharat brand, a label it launched in 2023 to provide food grains and other essential food items to the middle class at subsidised prices, a periodic tool for price stabilisation instead of a perennial product.
"We have decided to discontinue the Bharat brand products as prices of all major food items have come down because of increase in production," said a senior government official from the consumer affairs, food and public distribution ministry, who did not wish to be identified.
Retail stores owned by government agencies - National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) and National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India (NCCF) - have stopped selling Bharat Atta, Bharat Rice and Bharat dals in their stores.
India has produced record rice, wheat and maize in the 2024-25 kharif season, according to the agriculture and farmers' welfare ministry's second advance estimates of production of major agricultural crops. Production of major pulses - tur, gram and lentils - has also gone up compared to the previous season, bringing prices under control.
The forecast of a good monsoon during the June-September period has led to expectations of a robust production which will help keep prices under check. "There does not seem to be an immediate need to sell food at subsidised prices," the official said.
The cost of home-cooked vegetarian and non-vegetarian thalis declined by about 6% each year-on-year in May, said ratings agency Crisil in its latest 'Roti Rice Rate' report. However, there is a possibility of launching the next phase of the brand in case prices go up in the future or if the government's procurement of a certain item increases, the official said.
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