A Scheme to Provide Assistance for Building E-Market Facilities in Market Committees

What is the scheme for building e-market facilities in market committees?

A Scheme to Provide Assistance for Building E-Market Facilities in Market Committees is a Gujarat state government scheme administered by the Directorate of Agricultural Marketing and Rural Finance, a directorate of the Agriculture, Farmers Welfare and Co-operation Department. The scheme gives grant assistance to Agricultural Produce Market Committees for setting up electronic trading and auction infrastructure inside their market yards.

The Directorate administers the Gujarat Agricultural Produce Markets Act, 1963, under which market committees run regulated markets at district headquarters and other major trading centres. The Directorate reports around 400 market yards in the state, counting principal yards and sub-yards together. Those yards are where most of Gujarat's marketable surplus in grain, oilseed, cotton, spices and horticultural produce first changes hands.

The reason for the scheme is price discovery. Traditional open-outcry auction in a mandi is fast but opaque: the farmer often does not see how the price was arrived at, the record is handwritten, and payment disputes are hard to settle after the fact. An e-market facility puts each lot into a system, takes bids electronically, displays the winning price on a public board, and generates a digital sale record. The infrastructure that requires; servers, bidding terminals, display boards, networking, electronic weighbridges and assaying equipment; is capital the average market committee cannot fund unaided, which is what this scheme addresses.

Who is eligible for e-market assistance?

Eligible bodies:

• Agricultural Produce Market Committees constituted under the Gujarat Agricultural Produce Markets Act, 1963 and functioning in Gujarat.
• Committees with audited accounts up to date and no outstanding audit objections.
• Committees able to fund their own share of the project cost from market fee income, and to meet the recurring cost of running the system afterwards.
• Committees whose yard has the basic prerequisites, a covered auction platform, reliable power and network connectivity, or a plan to provide them.

Who is not eligible:

• Individual farmers cannot apply. There is no personal cash benefit under this scheme.
• Traders, commission agents, aggregators and private mandi operators cannot apply.
• Farmer producer organisations and co-operative societies are not eligible under this head, which names the market committee as the beneficiary.
• Committees under supersession or with unresolved statutory audit objections are generally held ineligible pending clearance.

Readers looking for an individual benefit should be clear on this point: the scheme upgrades the mandi, and the farmer's gain is a fairer auction, not a subsidy in the bank account.

What documents are required for a proposal?

How to apply for e-market facility assistance

1. Pass a board resolution in the Market Committee approving the e-market project, the site within the yard, and the committee's own share of the cost.
2. Prepare a detailed project report listing the electronic auction terminals, servers, display boards, networking, electronic weighbridge and assaying equipment proposed, with a vetted cost estimate and a timeline.
3. Assess and document the yard's readiness — power supply, connectivity, and the state of existing auction platforms, because the Directorate scrutinises whether the system can actually be operated once installed.
4. Route the proposal through the Directorate's district or regional officer for preliminary scrutiny.
5. Submit the proposal to the Directorate of Agricultural Marketing and Rural Finance, Block No. 13, 2nd Floor, Dr Jivraj Mehta Bhavan, Gandhinagar, and take an inward acknowledgement.
6. Answer the technical and financial scrutiny raised by the Directorate before it issues a sanction order.
7. Procure, install and claim. After sanction, the committee tenders and installs the system, commissions it, and files utilisation certificates against which the grant is released.

How is proposal status checked?

E-market proposals are tracked institutionally rather than through a public portal. The Market Committee Secretary should follow up with the Directorate in Gandhinagar on 079-23253950 or at director.apmc2018@gmail.com, quoting the inward number issued at submission and the name of the market committee.

Why e-market proposals get returned

• No operations plan. Proposals that cover only the purchase of hardware, and say nothing about who will run and maintain it, are commonly sent back.
• Unreliable power or connectivity at the yard, with no plan to fix it.
• Cost estimate not technically vetted, or IT costs quoted without comparative rates.
• Audit objections outstanding against the committee.
• Own contribution not demonstrated in the resolution or the audited accounts.
• Annual budget provision exhausted, in which case the proposal is normally carried forward rather than rejected.

Key dates

The Directorate does not publish a fixed last date for this scheme. Proposals are assessed against the annual state budget provision, so the practical window is the financial year 1 April to 31 March, and committees are best placed submitting in the first half of the year.

Contact and grievance

• Directorate of Agricultural Marketing and Rural Finance to 079-23253950, director.apmc2018@gmail.com, Block No. 13, 2nd Floor, Dr Jivraj Mehta Bhavan, Gandhinagar.
• Agriculture, Farmers Welfare and Co-operation Department, at agri.gujarat.gov.in, is the administrative department above the Directorate.