What is the issue?
e-NAM which is introduced as an online trading platform for farm commodities is lagging to attain its goals.
What is e-Nam?
- Electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM), is a pan-India electronic trading portal launched by Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare.
- The Portal is managed by Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) appointed by the Ministry.
- It aims to facilitate farmers, traders, buyers, exporters and processors with a common platform for trading commodities.
- It currently links 450 APMCs (Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees) from across 13states.
- 69 commodities including staple food grains, vegetables and fruits are currently listed in its list of commodities available for trade.
- Traders and exporters need to get themselves registered with the portal to access its services.
What are reasons for underperformance of e-Nam?
- State agricultural departments have been finding it difficult to convince all stakeholders like farmers, traders and commission agents to move to the online platform.
- The platform is not fully functional in any State as there are no scientific sorting/grading facilities or quality testing machines.
- Lack of technical expertise and internet facility at the State Agricultural Departments has also delayed the setting up of grading/assaying facilities.
- The huge share of the trade recorded in the e-NAM portal was actually carried out offline and the values were fed into the portal to make it look like genuine online transactions.
- This completely defeats the purpose as the main objective of an online auction portal is to help price discovery.
How this can be addressed?
- For success of e-NAM every State need to amend its APMC Act to make a provision for electronic auction as a mode of price discovery.
- The States opting for e-NAM must introduce structural adjustments to address any inconveniences faced.
- Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana aims to link release of funds to progress in agri reforms and in implementation of e-NAM may hopefully put pressure on the States.
Source: Business Line
