Hyderabad: With largescale evacuation of stocks of six commodities in packet form (laminated pouches), which will be given as free gifts to BPL families under the Chandranna Kanuka scheme, from the whole sale market, prices of jaggery, wheat flour, red gram, palmolein oil, Bengal gram and ghee are likely to go up during Sankranti.

The AP state civil supplies department has warned wholesale and retail marketers not to hike prices. The gift packs, worth Rs 220, will include half-kilo each of red gram, palmolein oil and jaggery, one-kilo of whole Bengal gram, wheat flour and 100 gm of ghee.

According to the civil supplies corporation chairman and managing director B. Rajashekar, all six commodities are being procured from the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange Limited platform through e-reverse auction.

As the scheme was okayed at the 11th hour , the civil supplies department did not have the option of getting a better price through the regular tendering process.

Jaggery is specially used to make “arisalu” during Sankranti and due to the increased demand, prices increase during the festival.

As the government has procured 6,503 metric tonnes, there are no stocks in the wholesale market. This will impact the retail market in the next few days.

The suppliers who participated in the e-reverse auction in NCDEX have siphoned stocks of these commodities from the market. In the span of a week, the price of low-quality jaggery has increased from Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,300 per 33 kg.

Due to non-availability and increased price, the state government has now dropped “cow’s ghee” from the gift list and replaced it with “buffalo ghee”, said Mr Rajashekar.

“We have procured the commodities and we are in the process of moving them to the points of the public distribution system. Most of the direct producers didn’t participate in the e-auction.

Producers will, in turn, procure from different agencies, suppliers within the state and outside the state too.

This should not affect the open market as we are not evacuating entire stocks. But we have some feedback that they may increase the price in the name of this scheme.”

P. Damodar Rao of Hyderabad, a wholesale supplier of wheat, said, “Big agencies had approached us for 500 tonne of wheat, but we do not have the stocks.”

A jaggery producer Ankamaiah of Srungarapuram said, “The price has been increased by Rs100 per 33 kg in the past few days. At this point of time it was not a big hike. But it depends on open market demand as the festival approaches.”