Wheat minimum-price purchase warehouse capacity reaches 29.22 million tons this year
On July 23, a relevant person in charge of Sinograin told reporters that this year 4,011 wheat minimum-price purchase storage points have been prepared, with a warehouse capacity of 29.22 million tons, fully sufficient to meet procurement needs. At present, the organized wheat minimum-price purchase is proceeding in an orderly and smooth manner. As of July 20, 14.54 million tons of wheat had been purchased under the minimum-price program, and a cumulative total of 35.9 billion yuan in purchase funds had been paid to farmers. Settlement of purchase funds was timely and payments were made in full, and farmers were satisfied.
⟦NL> The relevant person in charge of Sinograin introduced that since May 26, in order to protect the interests of grain-growing farmers, and in accordance with the national 2015 wheat minimum purchase price implementation plan, Sinograin Corporation successively launched minimum purchase of wheat in 5 provinces: Jiangsu, Hubei, Anhui, Henan and Shandong. Over the past two months, wheat purchased under the minimum-price program totaled 6.2 million tons in Henan, 4.85 million tons in Jiangsu, 2.88 million tons in Anhui, 308,000 tons in Hubei and 300,000 tons in Shandong. Grain entering warehouses strictly implemented the quality standards stipulated by the state, and quality was better than in previous years. In response to the situation in some areas where wheat was affected by rain and the proportion of unsound kernels exceeded the standard, Sinograin organized and carried out extended services in various places, proactively and free of charge providing grain brokers and large grain-growing households with personnel, technical, facilities and equipment services for grain storage, guiding farmers to store wheat of different qualities separately and sell it by category, thereby helping farmers increase income to the greatest extent possible. In terms of procurement organization, Sinograin, together with local grain administrative departments and the Agricultural Development Bank of China, implemented the requirements of “jointly determining entrusted purchase and storage points, jointly organizing acceptance inspections, jointly being responsible for the quantity and quality of purchased grain and for inventory management and sales out of warehouses, and jointly implementing the minimum purchase price policy”. At key stages such as site designation, acceptance inspection and signing of entrustment contracts, the three parties affixed their seals jointly, implementing mortgage guarantee measures and the responsibilities of all parties.
As the main borrower of policy-based procurement funds, Sinograin directly affiliated depots implemented “unified lending and unified repayment” for procurement funds at entrusted and leased storage points. In order to prevent fund risks and protect the vital interests of farmers selling grain, Sinograin strengthened procurement fund management in this year's summer grain procurement. During the procurement period, Sinograin implemented “one-time approval, disbursement in batches” for procurement funds, with small amounts and frequent lending and daily payments, to guarantee procurement fund needs; it uniformly used directly affiliated depot procurement vouchers and fully promoted online banking settlement, ensuring that grain payments were promptly credited to the cards of farmers selling grain, realizing traceable management of fund payments, and branch companies conducted dynamic monitoring of the allocation and use of procurement funds in their areas through the daily budget system for funds; each purchase and storage point was required to publicly post the procurement settlement situation within the warehouse area the next day, so that grain sellers clearly knew the settlement status of procurement funds.
It is understood that in recent years grain brokers, as grassroots grain purchase and sales entities, have developed rapidly. At present, in the state's minimum-price grain procurement, the proportion of grain sold by grain brokers accounts for more than 70%, playing an important role in making it convenient for farmers to sell grain and invigorating grain circulation, and becoming an important link connecting enterprises above and farming households below.