NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India will provide food grains for free to more than 813 million poor people for a year at a cost of 2 trillion rupees ($24.2 billion), India’s commerce minister said on Friday.
The scheme would run till December 2023, Piyush Goyal, the commerce minister, said at a news briefing.
The programme merges two scheme, including one started in 2020 during the height of COVID-19 pandemic, under which the government was providing free or subsidised food grains to the poor, Goyal added.
($1 = 82.7800 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Shivam Patel in New Delhi; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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