Community Forestry / Volume1 / Issue 5 / September 2002/ 1111 As a move towards formalising transfer of ownership over local natural resources to panchayats, in line with the provisions of Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, the Govt of Orissa came out with a policy on NTFP procurement and trade on 31st March, 2000 transferring ownership rights over locally available MFPs to Gram panchayats. The intention was to bring fundamental changes in the procurement and trade of NTFPs. It sought to initiate a process to create multiple buyers to do away with the monopoly trade arrangement of the past. Moreover, it decentralised and debureaucratised to a great extent the trading arrangements in a bid to encourage and motivate producers’ co-operatives, primary groups and people’s organisations to get into value addition and trading at the local level.