MCX Spot Exchange Forges Agri Tie-up With IL&FS

The National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL) and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) have announced a strategic alliance for development of agri-business and other allied services in India.

The Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of India, has decided to establish 100,000+ ICT-enabled Common Service Centres (CSCs) in rural areas based on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. It has appointed IL&FS as the ‘National Level Service Agency’ (NLSA) for project development, facilitation and co-ordination of the CSC Scheme.

NSEL will partner with the SCAs (Service Centre Agencies, who will establish and operate the CSCs) and other stakeholders to leverage the CSC network, to make use of infrastructure and internet-enabled network of accredited CSCs to promote, market and disseminate its services to more than 500,000 villages across the country.

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Commenting on the development, Anjani Sinha, MD and CEO, National Spot Exchange, said, “National Spot Exchange is poised to have far reaching impact at the bottom of the pyramid. National Spot Exchange will reach out to more than 5,00,000 villages through the widespread network of 1,00,000 CSCs. Farmers will be financially and psychologically independent as they will be able to make informed decisions by way of direct participation. This alliance will develop and strengthen rural-urban linkage to benefit the rural economy, and will prepare a solid ground for the launch of the much-needed second green revolution; seen as a long–term solution to India’s food crisis”.

Aruna Sundararajan, IAS, CEO (Common Service Centre), IL&FS said, “The well-established network of CSCs will facilitate the functioning of integrated service delivery points for various services including e-governance, education, health, agriculture, financial services, e-commerce and entertainment. CSCs will also provide farmers with real time prices as well as a transparent trading platform in the form of national spot exchange that will keep them abreast of the latest information relating to agricultural commodities and inputs. As a result, farmers will be able to take quick and right decisions”.

IL&FS and NSEL will work to explore the possibility of developing synergies between National Spot Exchange and CSC project to provide better prices to farmers through an e-trading platform. The alliance will benefit farmers in more ways than one. Farmers will have access to information relating to crops that will enable them to take decisions about selling their produce at prices made available on a national level platform.

The transparent trading platform will obviate the need for the middlemen. Farmers’ holding capacity will help them steer clear of the danger of distress sale at harvesting time. This is because farmers will be able to get bank loans against pledge of warehouse receipts after they deposit their produce at an NSEL warehouse.