Centre integrates trading system with agricultural services on eNAM

NEW DELHI: The government has developed the national electronic marketing platform eNAM as a “platform of platforms” by integrating trading systems with post-harvest agricultural services such as transportation, delivery, sorting, grading and other aspects of value chain.

“From just providing a trading platform for commodity trading, we are developing this as a bigger digital ecosystem, enabling farmers to add value to their produce and facilitate them with ease of agri marketing,” said PK Swain, joint secretary, agriculture ministry.

He said farmers will get farm-related specialised services such as quality check, sorting, grading packaging services, insurance, trade finance and warehousing.

“eNAM is aimed at benefiting the last-mile farmer and transforming the way they sell their agri produce. This intervention brings immense benefits to our farmers in augmenting their incomes by enabling them to realise competitive and remunerative prices in a transparent manner without incurring additional costs,” said Swain.

In the budget for 2021-22, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced doubling of the number of physical mandis integrated with eNAM.

“Currently 1,000 mandis across 18 states and three Union Territories are integrated with eNAM. Now we have a mandate to add 1,000 more mandis which will multiply the trade volume which has touched Rs 1.22 lakh crore. So far more than 1.69 crore farmers and 1.55 lakh traders have been registered on eNAM platform,” said Swain.

He said eNAM is a step towards the concept of “one nation, one market” which will enhance farmers’ accessibility digitally to multiple numbers of markets and buyers.

“It has brought transparency in trade transactions with the intent to improve price discovery mechanism, quality commensurate price realisation,” said Swain.