Official data showed that the agency had a capacity for 63.82 million tonnes of covered storage as on April 1. This shows the increase in such capacity has been limited, since it was 50.4 million tonnes in 2005.
Against this, grain production this year is expected to be 117.18 million tonnes.
"There is an acute shortage of storage space and government is deliberately not building more godowns," alleged Manas Ranjan of the Right to Food Campaign. "The government wants only private godowns to be built. This will dilute whole functioning of FCI."
There is proof of this as well. An official reply said out of 18.1 million tonnes of storage capacity approved for being built by the central, state and private agencies, just 2.9 million tonnes has been constructed - a mere 16 percent of approved space.
"Since 2008, all across the country, a storage capacity of 2.9 million tonnes has been created under the private entrepreneurship guarantee scheme and 45,000 thousand tonnes under Five Year Plan."
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