Government to link additional 200 wholesale mandis to eNAM this fiscal year to encourage inter-mandi transactions

New Delhi, May 14 (KNN) In an attempt to encourage inter-mandi transactions, the government will link additional 200 wholesale mandis to the online trading platform called eNAM (electronic National Agriculture Market) this fiscal year, said Agriculture Secretary S K Pattanayak.

Launched in April 2016, 585 regulated mandis in 14 states are linked with eNAM at present.

"There were initial hiccups but those have been overcome. The eNAM system is now more established. Farmers are very happy and more states have started showing interest,” he added.

Elaborating the focus area of this year, he said that the priority would be given to improve the quality and encourage inter-mandi online trading.

Though the target is to link 200 more mandis to the eNAM platform this year, he added.

"We will focus on quality. Once inter-mandi is in place, we can link more mandis," he noted. 

The eNAM platform provides online trading services that can be done through website, trading platform and mobile App available in several regional languages. 

So far, 73.50 lakh farmers, 53,163 commission agents and over 1 lakh traders from 14 states are registered on the eNAM platform which includes Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarkhand.

With a view to create a single national agriculture market for the benefit of farmers, in the first phase the government wants to ensure all wholesale agri-mandis adopt online auction and gradually will allow trading between mandis in a state and eventually between mandis outside states.