Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Textiles and Commerce and Industry, Piyush Goyal on Sunday said that the role of Food Corporation of India (FCI) is not only to deliver ration, but also to instill confidence in farmers and beneficiaries by bringing transparency, efficiency and accountability.

Speaking at the program commemorating the 60th Foundation of FCI, said emphasised that FCI needs to embrace digitization and technology by bringing quality in areas like inspection, procurement, transportation, distribution and storage. He also suggested to reduce operational costs through route optimization, mechanised loading/unloading, innovative storage solutions and others.

He said FCI’s Open Market Sale Scheme (Domestic) operations have also proved to be an effective tool in moderating the prices of essential commodities like wheat and rice to benefit consumers.

The Union Minister further added FCI has now entered the modern era operations, adopting digitization, streamlining the procurement process, setting up state- of- the- art laboratories and equipment, streamlining food grains procurement, construction of steel silos for better storage, installing CCTV cameras for better monitoring thereby, bettering infrastructure.