The food grain under Phase V would entail an estimated food subsidy of Rs 53344.52 crore, said the department of Food and Public Distribution. The total outgo of foodgrains in Phase V is expected to 163 lakh metric tonnes.
This will take the overall expenditure of nearly Rs 2.60 lakh crore in PMGKAY Phase I- V.
After completion of Phase IV, Phase V will begin from December 1, 2021.
Food grains at 5 kg per person per month free of cost for all the beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA)
including those covered under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT).
Phase-I and Phase-II of this scheme were operational from April to June, 2020 and July to November, 2020 respectively. Phase-III of the scheme was operational from May to June, 2021. Phase-IV of the scheme is currently operational for July-November, 2021 months.
This initiative started in the wake of economic disruptions caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country last year, the Government in March 2020 had announced the distribution of additional free-of-cost foodgrains (Rice/Wheat) to about 80 Crore National Food Security Act (NFSA) beneficiaries at the scale of 5 Kg per person per month under the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY), over and above the regular monthly NFSA foodgrains i.e., regular entitlements of their ration cards, so that the poor, needy and the vulnerable households/beneficiaries do not suffer on account of non-availability of adequate foodgrains during the times of economic crisis. So far, under the PM-GKAY(phase I to IV) the Department had allocated a total of almost 600 LMT foodgrains to the States/UTs equivalent to about Rs. 2.07 Lakh Crore in food subsidy.
The distribution under PMGKAY-IV is presently ongoing, and as per the reports available from States and UTs so far, 93.8% foodgrains have been lifted and nearly 37.32 LMT, 37.20 LMT , 36.87 LMT, 35.4 LMT and 17.9 LMT foodgrains have been distributed to about 74.64 crore, 74.4 crore, 73.75 crore, 70.8 crore and 35.8 crore beneficiaries respectively.
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