The Food Corporation of India (FCI) is on the spree to face-lift India’s wheat storage infrastructure and reduce the overall wastage, thus it will soon start the bidding of 249 storage silos at 249 locations.
The government will probably relax the Make in India clause for the Rs. 12,000 crore wheat storage projects which will be done through public private partnership.
Earlier the bidding of silos were done in one go, but this 249 silos will be bided now in three phases. The policy was earlier made in a way to promote local steel manufacturing for the silos, with steel being a major component of silos with more than 30% of the project cost but the policy of Make in India by steel ministry for steel products has not been made applicable in construction of steel silos where steel is 30% of project cost.
The project which was previous designed to allow competition from all major companies in India and across the world and had a key clause of 15% capping of capacity awarded to a single company or consortium.
In a recently held meeting, the Department of Food and Public Distribution, the 15% clause was done away with, the official added. The department had said that the FCI has awarded silo capacity of 25 lakh MT.