Digitalising Fair Price Shops in Himachal Pradesh | 12 Feb 2024
The Department of Food and Public Distribution, Government of India, launched a pilot program to onboard Fair Price Shops (FPSs) onto the Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform in Una and Hamirpur districts of Himachal Pradesh.
- It is the first time that Fair Price Shops are on-boarded on ONDC and aims at providing additional avenues of income generation for FPS dealers along with enhancing beneficiary satisfaction.
- FPS means a shop which has been licensed to distribute essential commodities to the ration card holders under the Public Distribution System.
- The term is defined in Section 2(4) of National Food Security Act, 2013.
- It offers daily food products like rice, oil, sugar, wheat, and other daily useful commodities at a much lower price than the market price.
- ONDC is a freely accessible government-backed platform that aims to democratise e-commerce by moving it from a platform-centric model to an open network for buying and selling of goods and services.
- It was launched by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (Ministry of Commerce and Industry) in 2021.
Read more: Public Distribution System, ONDC