01-14-2007, 04:40 PM
The question of allowing Foreign MNCâs and Indian big business houses like Reliance to allow entry into retail trade may or may not be harmful to the small businessmen or the supplier/producer. It will depend upon how the whole system is developed.
At present one of the main reasons of poor returns for agricultural products, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables grown my the small and marginal producers have been the poor marketing infrastructure. Even for medium size producers the dependence of the middleman and financer is a major financial burden as a large part of the profit is pocketed by them. The same is the case for milk, diary products ,poultry and goat meat as the actual producer has very few avenues to sell his product actually in the market.
In case the retail chains develop their own system of collecting farm products directly from the growers than it will eliminate the middleman and in the process the producer will get a much higher return. Since these will be in the private sector , the collection machinery will certainly be more effective than the government agencies and the co operatives that have been engaged in such activities without much success for several decades now. Whether it is Reliance Group or it is Wal Mert should not be of much concern if they are able to put in place an effective machinery to collect the products from the rural areas. This would go a long way in uplifting the economic conditions of the rural population , particularly that of the marginal farmers.
At present one of the main reasons of poor returns for agricultural products, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables grown my the small and marginal producers have been the poor marketing infrastructure. Even for medium size producers the dependence of the middleman and financer is a major financial burden as a large part of the profit is pocketed by them. The same is the case for milk, diary products ,poultry and goat meat as the actual producer has very few avenues to sell his product actually in the market.
In case the retail chains develop their own system of collecting farm products directly from the growers than it will eliminate the middleman and in the process the producer will get a much higher return. Since these will be in the private sector , the collection machinery will certainly be more effective than the government agencies and the co operatives that have been engaged in such activities without much success for several decades now. Whether it is Reliance Group or it is Wal Mert should not be of much concern if they are able to put in place an effective machinery to collect the products from the rural areas. This would go a long way in uplifting the economic conditions of the rural population , particularly that of the marginal farmers.