e-NAM (National Agricultural Market) is a pan-India electronic trading portal launched by Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Govt of India, to facilitate farmers, traders, buyers, exporters and processors with a common platform for trading commodities. It currently links 250 APMCs (Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees) from across 10 states. The Portal is managed by Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) appointed by the Ministry in association with a group of strategic partner selected for the purpose. Traders and exporters need to get themselves registered with the portal to access its services. 69 commodities including staple food grains, vegetables and fruits are currently listed in its list of commodities available for trade.
Contents
Objectives
Implementation Agency
Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) is the lead promoter of NAM. SFAC is a registered society of Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers’ Welfare (DAC&FW) under Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare. SFAC through open tender selects a Strategic Partner (SP) to develop, operate and maintain the NAM e-platform. SFAC implements NAM with the technical support of SP and budgetary grant support from DAC&FW. DAC&FW meets the expenses on software and its customization for the States and is providing it for free. DAC&FW is also giving a grant as one time fixed cost up to Rs.30 lakhs per Mandi (other than to the private mandis) for installation of the e-market platform. Around 6500 APMCs operate throughout the country of which 585 district level mandis in States/UTs desirous of joining are planned to be linked by NAM. 400 mandis are planned to be integrated by March 2017 and the remaining by March 2018.
Funds Allocation
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had approved a Central Sector Scheme for Promotion of National National Agricultural Market through Agri-Tech Infrastructure Fund (ATIF). The government has allocated Rs. 200 crore to the newly created ATIF. With this fund SFAC will implement NAM for three years from 2015-16 to 2017-18.
Implications / Benefits for various stakeholders
They can sell produce without the interference of any brokers or middlemen thereby making competitive returns out of their investment.
Traders will be able to do secondary trading from one APMC to another one anywhere in India.
Local traders can get access to larger national market for secondary trading.
Buyers like large retailers, processors or exporters will be able to source commodities from any mandi in India thereby reducing the inter-mediation cost.Their physical presence and dependence on intermediaries will not be needed.
NAM will increase the number of traders and the competition among them increases. This translates in to stable prices and availability to the consumers.
There will be reduction in book keeping and reporting system as it will be generated automatically. Monitoring and regulation of traders and commission agents becomes easy. Transparency in the process eliminates the scope of manipulation of tendering/auctioning process. Market allocation fee will increase due to accounting of all transactions taking place in the market. It will reduce the manpower requirements as the tendering/auctioning process is carried out electronically. For instance, the system declares the winner of lots within few seconds. It eliminates information asymmetry as all the activities of an APMC can be known directly from the website.
NAM aims to improve the marketing aspect of the agriculture sector. With one license for the entire state and single point levy, an entire state becomes a market and the market fragmentation within the same state gets abolished. It will improve the supply chain of commodities and reduces wastages.