E-platform eliminating middlemen in agri trade

ReMS (Rashtriya e MarketServices) is taking on the middlemen mafia in the agricultural products space, and giving control back to farmers.ReMS, a joint venture between the Karnataka government and NCDEX Spot Exchange that has launched an electronic auction system for transparent price determination, has 6 lakh farmers registered on its portal.The results are visible. In less than two years of the platform's launch, it has clocked a turnover of Rs 500 crore.

ReMS counts Metro Cash & Carry and Reliance among its customers. The platform, called the Unified Market Platform (UMP), currently has 100 Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMC) out of the total 160.

“It is the government's attempt to eradicate middlemen who come in the way of farmers having a say over the pricing of their crops,“ said Kaushik Mukherjee, chief secretary in the Karnataka government and also the chairman of ReMS.

Over 100 lakh quintals of agricultural produce have been traded on the platform and the mechanism has improved the price realization of far mers by about 70%-80%, said Mukherjee. Some of the major commodities traded online include green gram in Dharwad, Bagalkot and Hubli, soyabean in Haliyal, and Copra in Arasekere and Tiptur. “We have taken the political executive with us to kill the APMC mafia,“ Mukherjee said.He said in places like Tiptur, the mafia tried to game the system, but the farmer lobby overpowered them and drove them away .

CM says B'luru roads will improve soon

Bengaluru: Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said the state government was aware of the infrastructural problems plaguing the city and was planning to address it. “The state administration and BBMP are working towards development of infrastructure particularly in the IT hubs. A number of short and long term plans are being worked out for easing traffic congestion,“ he said on Tuesday at the inauguration of BangaloreITE.Biz. Siddaramaiah also said that Karnataka, which became one of the first states to introduce a startup policy, planned to incubate 20,000 startups by 2020, generating 6 lakh direct and 1.2 million indirect jobs. He said Karnataka intended to be the leader in the electronic system design and manufacturing (ESDM) sector by capturing 10% of the market in the next five years.

 

Source: http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31806&articlexml=E-platform-eliminating-middlemen-in-agri-trade-09122015022026


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