The Centre has asked states to take steps to reduce prices of edible and cooking oils ahead of the festive season. The Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) will hold a meeting with all states and Union Territories on Monday, October 25, 2021 through video conferencing to review the action taken on the stock limit order on edible prices.

In a letter written to all states by Secretary DFPD, Sudhanshu Pandey, the Department outlined initiatives taken by the Centre to ease prices of edible oils for relief of consumers and keeping the festive season in mind, said Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution in a statement.

The DFPD said it is monitoring the prices of edible oils and availability to the consumers. This is especially important to the context of the upcoming festival season in which demand of edible oils will increase.

The government took a number of states based on talks held with all the states and edible oil industry associations. The states have also been asked to disclose stocks and DFPD has also created a web portal to monitor the stock of edible oils, oilseeds on a weekly basis in the country.

Demand and consumption of edible is different for the different states and UTs as per the preference of the consumers. However, for finalising the stock limit quantity of edible oils and oilseeds, the states may consider previous stock limit imposed for edible oils and oilseeds by them, it added.

It may be considered that any stakeholder including refiners, millers, wholesaler etc should not hold the stocks in excess two months of the storage capacity.

States have also been asked to consider previous limits which may have been imposed by them.

For example: for refiners, stocks of maximum of 2 months of the average scale of last six months could be used. Similarly, quanitities may be fixed for extractors/millers may be fixed