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Electronic National Agricultural Markets, Impacts, Problems and Way Forward

There are about 585 Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) markets which were linked to Electronic National Agricultural Market (eNAM) in 14 states in India by 2018. There was a slow but definite increase in the adoption of eNAM by the stakeholders. There has been no detailed study so far on the impact of eNAM on prices received by farmers and bottlenecks faced in introducing this e-market platform in the existing markets. This article fills this research gap. The econometric results show that there has been an increase in prices received by the farmers and more markets have linked to eNAM due to the introduction of e-auction. Other benefits of eNAM include timely online payment of sale proceeds to the farmer’s bank account and reduced chances of collusion among traders. However, on the flipside, due to lack of quick assaying facilities, participation of distant traders has not picked up, which has resulted in no significant increase in competition. There is a need for increasing the participation of the stakeholders through formation of farmers groups, private sector participation in the maintenance of eNAM, convincing the traders and commission agents to use eNAM and linking warehouses and rural periodical markets to eNAM to increase the scale, scope and efficiency of market operations.