Ahead of the festival season, the government has released some stock of chana from buffer stock in the market to ease its availability and keep a check on the prices. Nafed sold 1100 MT of chana through auction in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana at Rs 4006 per quintal. Nafed may start selling chana in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Gujarat and UP from buffer stock. No benchmark price of chana has been fixed for auction. Chana stock with Nafed is around 27 lakh metric tonnes. According to the fourth advance estimates released by the government, India’s chana production estimate for 2017-18 is 11.23 million MT which is 18.97 per cent higher than 2016-17 final production estimates of 9.38 million MT. However, market participants are expecting production to be around 9 million MT. Moreover, imports of chana is not happening this year due to thirty per cent import duty. According to DGFT, India chana imports for 2017-18 is recorded at 9.81 lakh MT which is 9.19 per cent lower than the imports of 10.80 lakh tonnes for 2016-17.