Canadian Peas Arrival Likely To Stabilise Prices

NEW DELHI: The pulses prices in the domestic market may ease with the arrival of 93,000 tonne of yellow peas (white matar) of Canadian origin by this weekend. Public sector cooperative Nafed is expecting the arrival of 48,000 tonne of yellow peas by December 22 while state-owned trading firm PEC hopes the shipment of about 45,000 tonne of pulses will reach Indian ports in two to three days.

“We expect the remaining quantity of the 1.45 lakh tonne contracted yellow peas to arrive by December as we have already received 97,000 tonne,” a senior Nafed official said.

Yellow peas constitute the largest share in India’s pulses import basket leading to its prices in Canada surging to $550 per tonne from $300-350 a tonne in a year. Out of the total pulses import of over 7.43 lakh tonne from Canada in 2006 (January-December), peas have a share of 7.03 lakh tonne where yellow peas corner major 97-98%. Canada hopes to export over 1 million tonne(mt) of pulses to India in calendar year 2007, an industry body official said.

Meanwhile, state trading agencies — Nafed, STC, MMTC and PEC — have contracted to import 12.29 lakh tonne till December 12. Out of this amount, 7.99 lakh tonne of pulses comprising urad, yellow peas, tur, masoor, chana and moong have arrived since April this year. The government had asked these PSUs to import 15 lakh tonne during April-December this year while subsidising them 15% of their import cost.

Out of the 12.29 lakh tonne contracted pulses, yellow peas constitute the maximum at 8.13 lakh tonne while the remaining are urad, tur, moong and masoor. STC has contracted to import 2.6 lakh tonne of yellow peas out of which 2.23 lakh tonne have already arrived in India while PEC has brought into the country over 83,000 tonne from its contracted 1.9 lakh tonne.

MMTC has contracted for 2.03 lakh tonne of yellow peas and the arrival stood at 1.68 lakh tonne. Government-owned cooperative Nafed has contracted for import of 1.6 lakh tonne of yellow peas and the arrival so far is 97,760 tonne. Since the actual shipment may be 10% more or less of the contracted quantity, Nafed is expecting an arrival of a total 1.45 lakh tonne of yellow peas.