LAHORE: Punjab will provide 100,000 metric tonnes of wheat to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to meet its grain requirements which it will be lifting after Eidul Azha.
The Punjab Food Department this year had bought 100,000 metric tons of grain for KP, which earlier was used to be bought by private contractors on behalf of the KP province from certain areas of Punjab. However, their presence in the market used to jack up the prices.
“We had a G2G arrangement with KP this year and that is why procured more wheat than the target set for this year. The department has written the KP government to lift the committed 100,000 metric tons from the provincial food department,” said Director Food Punjab Danish Afzaal while talking to Business Recorder on Friday.
He said KP contractors usually used to buy wheat from Sargodha division and other areas till last year. Punjab assured to give flour to KP according to its need if its contractors are stopped from purchasing grains from Punjab. He said Punjab used to meet only 70 percent of wheat buying target from Sargodha division because of these private contractors but barring them from procurement this year resulted in crossing the procurement target by 10 per cent, he added.
He said that KP require 1.2 million tons of wheat per annum out of which they only have their own production of slightly over 100,000 metric tons and 100,000 metric tons is bought from Punjab while rest is taken from the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) and other federal institutions.
KP is lifting 500,000 metric tons from the PASSCO this year while another tranche of 500,000 metric tons is expected through Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP).
Regarding the price, Director Food Punjab said that KP government would pay around Rs 1,937 per maund, including official support price of Rs1800 plus incidental charges around Rs137 per maund. The KP government will transport this grain from Punjab at its own.
Talking about recently completed wheat procurement campaign and steps taken by the department to keep the market stable and make it a success, Danish Afzaal said that usually warehouses of rice millers remain empty during the wheat procurement season and they also have bank’s credit lines. So they utilize their empty space to hold wheat and make money by later offloading it in the market during the period from June to September. He said that department kept the rice millers out of hoarding wheat.
He said food department raiding teams focused these mills and recovered thousands of tonnes of wheat from these storages, while in the past farmers houses used to be targeted in checking hoarding of the grain.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
Comments
Comments are closed.