Consider the following statements about the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA):

1. It is a statutory authority under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.

2. Negotiable Warehouse Receipts are issued by the WDRA.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• The Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) was established under the Warehousing (Development and Regulation) Act, 2007 and it consists of one Chairperson and two full time members.

• It comes under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.

• The mission of the WDRA is to ensure that the interests of the farmers are protected through the growth and development in the warehousing sector.

• The main objectives are to improve the fiduciary trust of depositors and banks, increase liquidity in rural areas, encourage scientific warehousing of goods, lower the cost of financing, promote shorter and efficient supply chains, enhance reward for grading and quality and ensure better price risk management.

• The Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (NWRs), issued by the WDRA, will help the farmers to seek loans from the banks against the NWRs to avoid distress sales of agricultural produce during the peak marketing season and to avoid the post-harvest storage loss.

• The Authority has notified 123 agricultural commodities, including cereals, pulses, oil seeds, spices, rubber, tobacco, coffee etc., for issuing Negotiable Warehouse Receipts and also 26 horticultural commodities for cold storage.

• All the registered warehouses are on boarded to the repository system for issuing eNWRs against the deposits. The depositor can use eNWR to get loans against underlying commodities from banks and lien will be marked by the repository.