Punjab Food department may miss wheat procurement target

Wheat procurement by the Punjab Food Department (PFD) is showing a declining trend, as its centers across the province purchased only 79,325 metric tons on Sunday and thus the total procurement reached 3,195,517 metric tons, which is still around 900,000 metric tons short of the target of 4 million tons assigned to the department.
According to the figures of the department, wheat procurement was around 111,000 metric tons on Thursday and same was the trend before that day. However, then the purchase started declining and the department procured 98,532 metric tons on Friday and 86,464 metric tons on Saturday and it further came down on Sunday when the department could only procure slightly over 79,000 metric tons.
However, the department had so far distributed gunny bags sufficient for procurement of 3,658,167 metric tons of wheat. Nevertheless, gunny bags distribution numbers also declined with the same ratio and on Sunday the department could only distributed bardana for 32,085 metric tons of grain.
Agri Forum Pakistan (AFP) Chairman Dr Muhammad Ibrahim Mughal giving his reaction on this situation said that the procurement agencies whether in provinces or in the centre adopted delaying tactics in purchasing grains from the growers just to feather their own nests. He regretted that farmers seeing this situation approached the middlemen to dispose off their produce to meet their personal needs and to buy inputs for the next crops.
He said that in Lahore price of wheat had reached Rs 1270 per maund. He said this situation if the agencies continued purchase would only benefit the middlemen and arhtis. He was firm in his belief that Punjab Food or Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) will never be able to achieve their procurement targets of 4 million tons and 1.6 million tons, respectively.
He said Sindh Food Department had a target of 1.5 million tons and it hardly could achieve 900,000 metric tons. Mughal predicted that next month price of the commodity would reach at Rs 1300 per maund and feared that the government had to import commodity to meet the flour needs. He also alleged that the wheat production remained 2 million tons short of its target but the agriculture departments concealed the fact.