The Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) is vitalising its role as a major trading partner to the private and public sector in the country.
It has traversed a long way since its inception in 1967 as an importer and exporter from the government side. The TCP was registered under Companies Act 1913 while Ministry of Commerce, Pakistan owns all the shares of the corporation.
The TCP was meant to act as a counterpart of the state trading organisations in the socialist countries for importing items assigned to the TCP in import policy, achieve economies of scale by handling bulk transactions, prevent leakage of foreign exchange through over/under invoicing, stabilise market conditions in the country and neutralise effect of high market prices resulting from unwarranted escalation by private importers and act as a check and balance on disparity import prices and scarcity prices.
The TCP was given a new role in 1995 by the then Federal cabinet to import essential commodities in emergent conditions, import of soybean oil in PL-480 programme and CC credit, import of palm Oil from Malaysia under Malaysian credit, import of industrial raw materials and other selected bulk items and the utilisation of the credit facilities.
It was assigned to export selected items of public sector corporations, agencies, channelling exports through TCP to various markets under credit line given by the Government to expand business in areas such as Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Central Asian Republics (CAR), Malaysia, African countries, etc; undertake export of non-traditional items to non-traditional markets on experimental basis and undertake counter trade to explore new markets and promote exports, particularly to the countries facing liquidity crunch.
To ensure a fair price to the cotton growers, the government decided in 1999-2000 crop season to intervene in the market and directed TCP to purchase lint cotton from ginning factories for stabilising cotton and phutti prices.
The government assigned inspection of Brown Rice (exported to the European countries) to TCP since August 2002 that was earlier done by the RECP. TCP is discharging this responsibility to the satisfaction of the exporters and custom authorities in the European countries.
The TCP performed well during 2004-2005 in export and import sectors. On behalf of the government of Pakistan, the TCP under the third Japanese Non-Project Grant handled a quantity of 33,614 MT Soybean Oil valued at about Rs 1.1 billion (18.554 million dollars). The whole quantity has been sold through public auction to the manufacturers of ghee units.
The TCP imported 1,368,688 MT wheat valued at Rs 16.956 billion (282.605 million dollars) to meet the shortage in the country. The imported wheat has been delivered to the provincial governments, government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and defence authorities.
The TCP imported 486,589 MT Urea valued at Rs 8.367 billion (141.813 million dollars) to meet the shortage of urea in the country. It was delivered to the nominees of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Minfal) such as FFC, Karachi and Lahore, Engro, NFML and Dawood Chemical.
Due to bumper crop of 14.342 million cotton bales in the 2004-2005 cotton season, the prices of seed cotton (Phutti) were under pressure and remained much below the support price of Rs 925 per 40 kilograms fixed by the government.
The TCP carried out massive operation of procurement of cotton to save the interests of the cotton growers and ensuring the fair price to them. TCP has made contracts for purchase of 2,586,500 cotton bales out of which 1,615,391 valued at Rs 15.694 billion were delivered to the TCP by the ginners.
The TCP sold 477,371 cotton bales to the local textile industry till June 30, while 27,201 bales were shipped.
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