The Food Corporation of India (FCI) will shortly begin bidding on 249 storage silos at 249 locations in order to improve India’s wheat storage infrastructure and reduce total loss.
For the Rs 12,000 crore wheat storage facility, which would be done through a public-private partnership, the government is expected to relax the Make in India clause.
According to a senior government official, the bidding of silos at 249 locations, which was previously to be done in one go, would now be done in three phases.
The policy was initially designed to encourage local steel manufacturing for silos, with steel accounting for more than 30% of the total project cost. However, the steel ministry’s Make in India policy for steel products has not been extended to steel silos, where steel accounts for 30% of the total project cost.
The project, which was previously designed to allow competition from all major firms in India and around the world, included a critical condition that limited capacity awards to a single company or consortium to 15% of total capacity.
The 15 percent condition was eliminated at a recent meeting of the Department of Food and Public Distribution, according to the official.
The FCI had allocated a silo capacity of 25 lakh MT, according to the department.