Food Corporation of India (FCI) has decided to develop an online procurement system for registration of farmers and procurement of foodgrains. This system will send alerts through short message service (SMS) to the registered farmers on date of procurement, location of procurement center, weight of foodgrains procured and details of online payment made to the farmer for his procured foodgrains. Thus, the system will enable FCI to track payment to farmers and bring transparency in grain procurement. This information was given by the Minister of State Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Shri C.R.Chaudhary.

The Minister said that some states like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh have already started e-procurement of foodgrains. A national workshop on e-procurement was held at Bhopal on 5th & 6th April, 2016 in which 16 States had participated. States have been told to adopt the Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh model or develop their own systems for online procurement operations.