Government announces digitisation of warehouse registrations

New Delhi: The government on Tuesday announced the digitisation of the entire process of warehouse registration, a move which is likely to benefit farmers by helping them realise better prices for their produce.

Announcing the decision, food and consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan said the move will be a step towards doubling the farmers’ income by 2022 as well as realising the Digital India mission as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Launching the web portal of Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) and “Electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipt (e-NWR) System”, Mr Paswan said this will help in simplification of the Warehouse Registration Rules and digitising the entire process of registration, monitoring and surveillance as well as creation and management of Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (NWRs) in electronic form through two repositories.

After the digitisation, the e-NWRs would have no chances of any tempering, mutilation, fudging, loss or damage and with no possibility of any multiple financing. Hence, these NWRs will not only facilitate an easy pledge financing by banks and other financial institutions but also smooth trading on various trading centres like commodity exchanges, electronic National Agriculture Markets (e-NAM) and other electronic platforms. The minister said he felt that these e-NWRs will save expenditure in logistics as the stocks could be traded through multiple buyers without physical movement and can be even split for partial transfer or withdrawal.

Mr Paswan said that these initiatives would revolutionise the marketing of agricultural commodities and help farmers realise better price for their produce, which will be a step towards doubling the farmers’ income by 2022 as well as Digital India mission as envisaged by the Prime Minister.