Agri-cooperative major national agricultural cooperative marketing federation (Nafed), the government’s biggest procurement agency for oilseeds and pulses, will soon launch its e-auction portal for selling agricultural commodities in the market.
The portal ‘Nafex.in‘ will also consider allowing state level federation of cooperatives and agencies to conduct their e-auction on the platform to be launched soon by Nafed.
“We want to have our own portal for e-auction which other agencies can participate in,” Deepak Agarwal, MD, Nafed, told FE.
The portal is currently being tested and will commence operations shortly.
Currently Nafed uses private platforms such as mjunction, NCDEX e Markets – NeML and E-Teach for selling about 5.3 million tonne (MT) of pulses and oilseeds annually from farmers under the price support scheme (PSS) and price stabilisation fund (PSF).
The other government designated agency – National cooperative consumer’s federation of India (NCCF) also uses these private platforms to carry out e-auction of commodities purchased under PSS and PSF.
These private agencies carry out e-auction of the commodities on behalf of Nafed and NCCF using multiple portals simultanesously while the bidders with highest bids get approval to buy it. These agencies charge 0.03% of total value of commodities traded on the platform from the buyers of the commodities.
Nafed’s portal is developed in collaboration with consulting firm Deloitte.
To improve efficiency in the operations, Nafed is currently implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, e-auction portals, and artificial intelligence solutions to its complex operations of procurement, storage and selling of agricultural commodities, an official with Nafed said.
Nafed and NCCF carry out market intervention initiatives as per the directive of agriculture ministry and department of consumer affairs when agricultural commodities – pulses, oilseeds and onions price rule below minimum support support (MSP). Procurement of pulses from registered farmers under PSS is carried out for creating a buffer of 2.3 MT.
NAFED reported a sales turnover of Rs 26,946 crore for 2024–25, compared to Rs 26520 crore in FY24.
However the federation last fiscal reported a record net profit of Rs 565 crore.
In FY25, under PSS the federation purchased over 5 MT of pulses and oilseeds valued at Rs 31,493 crore, earning a service charge of Rs 379 crore.
The federation procured Rs 70 crore worth of pulses and onions valued at Rs 615 crore under PSF last fiscal. Currently Nafed’s E-Samriddhi portal has 4.3 million farmers registerd for pulses and oilseeds purchase.