Various stakeholders in rice export business have called for setting up a standard benchmark system for pre-shipment inspection (PSI) of rice, and urged the government to appoint a neutral body for this purpose. The stakeholders, including rice processors, growers, millers and exporters, in a bid to evolve a definite benchmark system of preshipment inspection (PSI) of rice held a meeting at a local club on Friday.
In order to maintain transparency and impartiality during PSI process, they urged the Ministry of Production, Industries & Special Initiatives (MoPI&SI) to appoint a totally neutral body, like National Productivity Organisation (NPO), to manage the PSI of rice. The NPO should lay down a revised benchmark in line with Pakistan Standards Institution manual to remove the differences between growers, millers, processors and exporters who are not coming to terms and blaming each other for faults, they added.
They observed that the Quality Review Committee (QRC), managed by Rice Exporters of Association of Pakistan (Reap) was unable to comprehend the actual position and was giving rise to conflict of interests among different stakeholders.
The growers, lacking knowledge of advanced system of cultivation, were not being educated by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture & Livestock (Minfal), and millers were complaining of admixtures and contrast in varieties. The processors were also complaining of not getting proper quality and growers were clamouring about field mixtures, they pointed out.
They complained that rice exporters were dependent on the growers, millers, processors and were badly affected by the manipulations of the brokers and middlemen who create such situations which compel the shippers to pay higher prices.
The SMEs involved in the rice business as growers, millers, processors and exporters expressed their serious concern over the deteriorating situation and called upon the MoPI&SI to intervene and entrust the task to NPO to evolve a system to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders of rice business whereby rice quality could be improved and monitored at all stages as a precaution.
According to one rice exporter, the QRC was established by the Nawaz Shariff government to favour some of his friends associated with the rice business but still after his departure the system remains in vogue.
He further said that the government was seriously considering to do away with the system as it gives rise to conflict of interest and considered as unfair on grounds that how PSI could be managed by exporters themselves.
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