NEW DELHI: Eight years since the launch of the electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM), which digitally integrated over 1,400 wholesale markets, inter-state and inter mandi trade via his platform has made little progress.
Sources said that in FY25, inter-state eNAM trade declined sharply by 50% to Rs 21 crore from Rs 42 crore in FY24. This means the eNAM goal of creating a pan-India market for agriculture goods, with unfettered market access for farmers regardless of their geographical locations, hasn’t been met.
Trade via eNAM between mandis within the states grew to Rs 1769 crore in FY25, an increase of 7% compared to previous fiscal. Overall sales turnover of e-NAM, rose to Rs 80,262 crore in 2024-25,a marginal increase of 2% compared to FY24.
Experts say that the low volume of inter-state and inter-mandi trade being reported for the last few years hampers the growth of the platform being used for better price discovery by the farmers. The farmgate sales reported on e-NAM dropped to mere Rs 63 crore last fiscal from Rs 94 crore in FY24.
Farmers across several states including Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir had started to sell commodities on e-NAM without physically transporting it to the mandis using the farm-gate model in 2022-23.
Currently, 1473 mandis in 27 states and union territories including Tamil Nadu (213), Rajasthan (173), Gujarat (144), Maharashtra (133), Uttar Pradesh (125) and Haryana (108) mandis are on e-NAM platform which was launched in April 2016.
Also, 17.89 million farmers, 4,404 FPOs, 265,000 traders and 1,15,214 commission agents are registered with e-NAM.
At present, 231 agricultural, horticultural and other commodities notified by respective state governments.were finalized for online e-auction in e-NAM platform.
Sources said there are estimated to be around 7000 mandis in the country and after the recommendation from mandi boards of respective states, the marketplace for agricultural produce comes on board of e-NAM.
The agriculture ministry recently stated in the parliament “considering logistics challenges in promotion of inter-state and inter-mandi trade under e-NAM, Government has taken a decision to upgrade e-NAM platform as e-NAM 2.0, which will facilitate the onboarding of various logistic service providers,”.
The ministry stated allowing them to seamlessly integrate their operations and collaborate in planning, implementing, and managing the flow of commodities, services, and information throughout the value chain. eNAM 2.0 is envisioned to be an open digital platform enabling forward and backward linkages.
The objective of this initiative is to overcome logistic gaps and enable faster trade, reduced wastage and better farmer incomes.
The main features of e-NAM 2.0 would be bank account validation, eKYC features using Aadhaar and onboarding of assaying, logistics and other value added service providers.
Source: The Financial Express
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