National Assembly body asks government to fix Rs 550/40-kg wheat support price

The National Assembly standing committee on Agriculture has recommended the government to fix Rs 550 per 40-kg support price of wheat and decrease the DAP price to Rs 1000 from Rs 1400 per 50-kg bag in order to make the inputs within the reach of the growers.
The standing committee on Agriculture met here on Tuesday to discuss the support price of wheat and the livestock production. Makhdum Syed Ahmed Alam Anwar chaired the meeting and the senior officials of Minfal also participated.
The committee discussed the main reasons of the wheat crisis in the country despite surplus production. The committee was told that the wheat produced in 2006-07 was 23.5 million tons. Out of this, 60-70 (13-14 million tons) percent was stored by the growers themselves for their own use while the government had 4.5 million tons. Moreover 1.2 million tons wheat was stored by the mills that was financed by the State Bank of Pakistan.
In international market, the prices of maize and rice are increasing. So, the feed millers have increased the use of wheat in animals feed instead of rice and maize. The feed millers are consuming 0.125 million tons of wheat every month. The committee was informed that one million tons of wheat would be imported in order to control the price hike of wheat and flour in the domestic market.
Makhdum Ahmed Alam said that the wheat crisis can be avoided simply by rationalising the support price. Ishaq Khan Khakwani, former State Minister for Information Technology, said that the government's claim about the surplus wheat production in 2006-07 is false. The government just wanted to increase the GDP growth rate this year.
He said that the support price should be fixed by the government more than Rs 500 per 40-kg because if it fixes the support price less than Rs 500 then it would have to lose a huge area under wheat because due to increasing international prices of maize and sunflower, the growers would definitely prefer to grow these profit earning crops. Inputs play a central role in the crop production. Khakwani told the committee, "It is really pathetic that a DAP bag is being sold at Rs 1400 while a grower has to use two bags of DAP, 2 bags of Urea and one bag potash for better per acre production".
Wheat will be cultivated at an area of 20 million acres and the production is expected to be 1080-kg per acre. It means that the inputs of Rs 50 billion (Rs 26 billion of DAP, 22 billion of Urea) will be used to have an expected quantity of 24 million tons wheat for the next year. While seeds of worth Rs 20 billion will be used for the next crop.
Khakwani pointed out that government should come up with new varieties of seed because it is the basic and the primary input of every crop. The meeting reviewed the on-going projects for uplift of livestock sector. It was briefed that three years ago, just one project worth Rs 1.9 billion was running for improving the livestock while now five projects worth Rs 7.3 billion have been launched for this sector.