The Food Corporation of India (FCI) is a statutory body of the Government of India, established to implement national food policy. It functions under the Department of Food and Public Distribution within the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution. The Corporation is one of the largest public sector undertakings in India dealing with the procurement, storage, movement, distribution, and sale of foodgrains.
| Name | Food Corporation of India |
|---|---|
| Type | Statutory corporation (Government of India) |
| Founded | 14 January 1965 |
| Founding statute | Food Corporations Act, 1964 |
| Headquarters | New Delhi, India |
| Parent ministry | Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution |
| Sector | Food security, agriculture, public distribution |
The Food Corporation of India was set up against the backdrop of recurring food shortages in the 1950s and early 1960s. India at the time was heavily dependent on imported foodgrains, including supplies under the United States PL-480 programme. The Government of India enacted the Food Corporations Act, 1964 to create a dedicated agency that could operate price support, manage buffer stocks, and ensure availability of staple foodgrains across the country. FCI began functioning on 14 January 1965, with its first operations in the wheat-growing regions of northern India.
The Corporation operates under three primary objectives set out in its founding framework:
FCI procures foodgrains, principally wheat and rice, at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) declared by the Government on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. It also procures coarse grains in select states. The grains are stored in a network of owned, hired, and Central Warehousing Corporation depots across India and moved through rail and road logistics to consuming states.
FCI is headed by a Chairman and Managing Director and a Board of Directors. Its operations are organised into five zones — North, South, East, West, and North-East — each headed by an Executive Director. Below the zones are regional offices in states and district-level offices that supervise procurement centres, depots, and movement.
Procurement by FCI is carried out either directly or through state government agencies under the decentralised procurement scheme introduced in 1997, under which participating states procure foodgrains on behalf of the Government of India. The grains are issued to states for distribution through fair price shops under the Targeted Public Distribution System and welfare schemes such as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, the Integrated Child Development Services, and, since 2013, the National Food Security Act. During the COVID-19 pandemic, FCI supplied additional foodgrains under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.
The functioning of FCI has been examined by several committees over the decades. The High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of FCI, chaired by former Union Minister Shanta Kumar, submitted its report in 2015. It recommended, among other measures, handing over procurement operations in states with established systems to state agencies, greater use of cash transfers in the PDS, and modernisation of storage through silos. FCI has since invested in steel silo capacity and end-to-end computerisation of its depot operations.
FCI is central to India's food security architecture. Its procurement operations underpin the Minimum Support Price regime that influences the cropping pattern in major foodgrain states, while its distribution operations supply foodgrains to a coverage of about two-thirds of the population under the National Food Security Act. The Corporation's buffer stocking norms, fixed by the Government, serve as a strategic reserve against droughts, supply disruptions, and price shocks.