Procurement drive going well: Punjab Food Department purchases 65,657 MT of wheat so far

Procurement drive of the Punjab government is going well and the department has so far bought 65,657 metric tons of wheat while it has distributed sufficient gunny bags to pack over 700,000 metric tons of wheat.
According to the break up provided by the sources in the food department, it has so far procured 1,521 metric tons from Gujranwala, 3,725 metric ton of wheat from Lahore region, 1,472 metric tons from Faisalabad, 1,134 metric tons from Sargodha, 6,862 metric tons from Multan, 7,229 metric tons from Sahiwal, 6,088 metric tons from D. G. Khan and 12,715 metric tons from Bahawalpur division.
So far, the department today procured 40,747 metric tons of wheat and distributed gunny bags for 1,59,000 metric tons of wheat. Meanwhile, the Punjab Food Minister Malik Nadeem Kamran has said that the government has sufficient funds to procure 5 million tonnes of wheat. He said gunny bags to buy 5.3 million tonnes of wheat are available with the government.
Commenting on a statement of Opposition Leader in Punjab Assembly Chaudhry Zaheer Uddin, the minister said the wheat procurement campaign is the proof of Punjab government's pro-farmer policies and the government will safeguard the interests of farmers. He said the government is buying wheat at the rate of Rs 950 per 40 kilograms. He said the government has stocks to store wheat worth Rs 97 billion while it is buying wheat of Rs 120 billion. He said the government has completed all the arrangements to procure wheat on such a wide scale.
The minister said the Punjab government and the federal government are co-operating with each other on wheat procurement, but the opposition is levelling baseless allegation against the Punjab leadership to gain political mileage.
While the Punjab Food Department has strongly dispelled the impression that government's wheat procurement campaign is slow and the purchase of 8 bags per acre from the farmers is their exploitation.
The department's spokesman said that wheat procurement campaign of Food Department is being carried out as per policy and more than 0.7 million gunny bags have so far been distributed to the cultivators. He said that Punjab Food Department is making all out efforts to safeguard the interests of the farmers.
The spokesman further stated that decision of buying 8 bags of wheat per acre from the farmers had been taken after the thorough consideration and consultation with all stakeholders.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (Passco) also formally kicked off its wheat procurement drive in the areas designated to it in Punjab and Sindh from Tuesday by starting distribution of gunny bags amongst the farmers. The procurement target assigned to the Corporation for this year is 1.6 million tons and it has set up some 177 procurement centres in Punjab and 13 in Khairpur districts of Sindh.
The Corporation has mainly to act in Punjab where it has fifteen Tehsils for procurement including Okara, Pak pattan, Minchanabad, Bahawalnagar, Burewala, Mailsi, Mian Channu, Kehror Pukka, Lodhran, Khanpur, Alipur, Layyah, Gojra, Hafizabad and Pindi Bhattian. Regarding the finance arrangements, the sources said that the Corporation needed Rs 42 billion to meet the procurement target of 1.6 million tons of wheat and so far it had succeeded to manage Rs 17 billion. Negotiations with the banks are underway for arrangement of further finance, the sources added.
About storage, the sources maintained that this year all the procured wheat would be stored at open places and for this, the Corporation had made necessary arrangements. They said special complaint cells have also been set up to remove the complaints of growers, if any, with regard to the procurement.