Procurement of wheat to kick off in Sindh from March 25

In order to meet the wheat procurement target of 8.25 million tons fixed by the federal government for 2019-20 at an estimated cost of Rs288.75 billion, procurement of the commodity will start in Sindh from March 25.
A senior official of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (NFS&R) said that the Sindh Food Department and the Pakistan Agriculture Storage Services Cooperation (Passco) will start wheat procurement in Sindh.
He said that a meeting presided over by the Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtyar, held through video link, informed that procurement of wheat in Sindh will start on March 25.
The official said that Minister for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives Punjab Malik Nauman Ahmed Langrial and Minister for Agriculture Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mohib Ullah Khan attended the meeting, while Minister for Agriculture Balochistan Zmarak Khan Achakzai and Minister for Agriculture Sindh Muhammad Ismail Rahu did not attend the meeting.
However, senior officials of the food departments of Sindh and Balochistan attended the meeting, he said. The meeting was also attended by the Federal Secretary NFS&R, Dr Muhammad Hashim Popalzai and Managing Director (MD) PASSCO Imran Nasir Khan.
He said that the meeting was informed that 1,162 wheat purchase centers had been set up across the country, and the district administration in all the provinces had been ordered to take strong legal action in order to curb the hoarding.
Wheat will be purchased at the minimum support price (MSP) approved at Rs1,400 per 40-kg. The officials said that the meeting also decided that procurement of wheat by feed millers, non players like rice mills and ginners should be disallowed. The minister directed to devise daily or weekly monitoring procedure to evaluate procurement targets.
He also suggested to follow directions given by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) with respect to intra-provincial agreements defining the quantity and price of the wheat crop, so that sharing of cost by all the provinces should be rationalized.
The minister said that there was sufficient supply of wheat/flour in the country and the government was also going to procure heavily in this season. Meanwhile, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) forecasted more rains in the upcoming days. Another westerly wave is likely to enter Pakistan on Friday that will intensify on Sunday.
Under the influence of this westerly wave, rains are expected in the country in the coming days, such as isolated rain thunderstorm with gusty winds (a few hailstorm) is expected in north Balochistan (Quetta, Zhob, Qila Abdullah, Qila Saifullah, Pishin, Musa Khail), Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (Chitral, Dir, Swat, Kohistan, Mardan, Peshawar, Charsadda, Nowshera, Waziristan, Mohmand, and Bajaur), Islamabad and upper Punjab (Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Chakwal, Attock, Mianwali, and Khushab) on Friday/Saturday.