Current Affairs:(Socio-Economic Issues)

Price Stabilization Fund

• The Department of Agriculture & Cooperation has approved the Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF) as a Central Sector Scheme, with a corpus of Rs.500 crores, to support market interventions for price control of perishable agri-horticultural commodities during 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17. PSF will be used to advance interest free loan to State Governments/Union Territories and Central agencies to support their working capital and other expenses on procurement and distribution interventions for such commodities. Initially the fund is proposed to be used for onion and potato only.
• The Price Stabilization Fund will be managed centrally by a Price Stabilization Fund Management Committee (PSFMC) which will approve all proposals from State Governments and Central Agencies. The PSF will be maintained in a Central Corpus Fund account to be opened by Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC), which will act as Fund Manager. Funds from this Central Corpus will be released in two streams, one to the State Governments/UTs as a one time advance to each State/UT based on its first proposal and the other to the Central Agencies. The Central Corpus Fund has already been established by SFAC in 2014-15.