NEW DELHI, Jan 18: India, the world’s second largest wheat producer, expects to meet the production target of 75.5 million tons this season and has no immediate plans for any more imports, a minister said on Friday.

“I am confident that in the next two months, we should be able to harvest over 75 million tons” for the year to March 2008, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar told a business leaders’ conference.

No fresh imports of wheat were being considered, at least for now, he added.

However, India’s national government and states need to draw up a “roadmap for taking agricultural growth and farmers’ welfare to a higher growth trajectory,” Pawar said.

India, once a wheat surplus nation, floated a global tender last November to purchase 350,000 tons to replenish buffer stocks used to feed its hungry poor and keep market prices under control.

It had earlier clinched import deals for 1.3 million tons last year to build up buffer stock.

Wheat sowing is carried out in November and December and the crop is harvested in March.

India imported wheat in 2006 for the first time in six years, buying 5.5 million tons after a poor harvest and is now one of the world’s top three importers.

India’s wheat production last year was 74.89 million tons against 69.35 million tons the previous year.

The move to import wheat raised alarm bells about food security in the country of 1.1 billion people after a 1970s “green revolution” quadrupled staple food production and banished fears of famine. But the federal government has dismissed such fears.

Late last year, New Delhi boosted the price it would pay wheat farmers to Rs1,000 (25.40 dollars) per 100 kgs from Rs850 in a bid to spur planting.

The government has been paying as much as Rs1,600 per 100 kgs to foreign traders, causing outrage from the opposition, which has described the procurement policies as a “scandal.”

India’s imports of wheat have been pushing global prices higher, exacerbating what commodities experts have called the “great wheat panic.” —AFP