Big Bazaar group wants tie up for PDS shops

     Raipur, September 17, 2016: Kishore Biyani led Future Group wanted to tie up with the Chhattisgarh government to expand its business base in the rural untapped market by selling its products through the state government run PDS shops, official said today.

     “A presentation was given recently by the Future group at Raipur about their working plan,” a senior state government official told ChhattisgarhTopNews.Com.

     “Chhattisgarh has 12,354 fair price shops in the state where only PDS items are being sold and the private party wanted to sale his soap, paste, oil, cosmetics and other materials through these PDS shops,” the official, who had attended the presentation, said.

     During the presentation, the private party said they wanted to introduce their Rajasthan model in Chhattisgarh.

     Future Consumer Enterprise Ltd had signed an agreement in August last year to facelift 5,000 ration shops, out of a total of 26,000, reports said. While Rajasthan State Food and Civil Supply Corporation provided edible oils, sugar and wheat on subsidised prices, the Future Group was pushing its products taking advantage of the chain of shops there.

     Officials said the Future Goup has expressed interest in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and even a team of officials from Bhopal had visited Rajasthan to study the model. 

     The Big Bazaar group had given a presentation and wanted to convince the state government officials about their working plan, but it had lot of short comings as the PDS model being implemented in Chhattisgarh are different from Rajasthan, a Food and Civil Supply Department official said.

      We have a mandate to distribute PDS items and non-PDS items may create a lot of problems for the shop owners also, they said.