Consider the following statements: 1. Regarding the procurement of food grains, Government of India follows a procurement target rather than an open-ended procurement policy. 2. Government of India announces minimum support prices only for cereals. 3. For

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Q: 77 (IAS/2004)
Consider the following statements:
1. Regarding the procurement of food grains, Government of India follows a procurement target rather than an open-ended procurement policy.
2. Government of India announces minimum support prices only for cereals.
3. For distribution under Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), wheat and rice are issued by the Government of India at uniform Central issue prices to the States/ Union Territories.
Which of the statements given above is/ are correct?

question_subject: 

Economics

question_exam: 

IAS

stats: 

0,99,119,16,13,99,90

keywords: 

{'targeted public distribution system': [0, 0, 1, 0], 'procurement target': [0, 0, 1, 0], 'procurement policy': [0, 0, 1, 0], 'uniform central issue prices': [0, 0, 1, 0], 'procurement': [0, 0, 4, 2], 'tpds': [0, 0, 2, 0], 'minimum support prices': [0, 0, 3, 0], 'distribution': [0, 0, 1, 0], 'food grains': [0, 0, 0, 2], 'rice': [0, 0, 0, 4], 'india': [8, 1, 7, 13], 'government': [5, 0, 0, 1], 'wheat': [4, 1, 2, 2], 'cereals': [1, 0, 0, 0]}

The correct answer is option 3 which includes statements 1 and 3.

1. Government of India does follow an open-ended procurement policy rather than a procurement target. This means that the government continues to purchase foodgrains without any limit to meet the requirements of the public distribution system and other welfare schemes--so the first statement is correct.

2. The government, however, does not only announce a minimum support price for cereals, as statement 2 suggests. The minimum support price is announced for 22 mandated crops including cereals, oilseeds and commercial crops which makes statement 2 incorrect.

3. Concerning the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), the government indeed issues wheat and rice at uniform Central issue prices to the States/ Union Territories. This means that the cost at which central government provides food grains to the states before it is sold to people at subsidized prices is the same across all states--making statement 3 correct.

Therefore, option 3 with statements 1 and 3 is the correct answer as both these statements are correct whilst statement 2 is inaccurate.