About 2.3 million tons of wheat procured

ISLAMABAD: Wheat procurement campaign across the grain growing areas of the country was in full swing as about 2.3 million tons of the commodity had been procured so far from the top grain growing provinces including Punjab and Sindh.

The provincial governments along with the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) had taken measures to facilitate the farmers to sell their produces at official fixed rates of at Rs 1,300 per 40 kg.

The provincial government and PASSCO had also set up their procurement centers across the wheat growing areas for facilitating the growers and providing them necessary assistance to sell their grains, said Food Security Commissioner Dr Imtiaz Ahmad Gopang.

Talking to APP here on Friday, he said that so far the Punjab Province had procured about 1.5 million tons of the wheat as against the set targets of 4 million tons during the procurement season of 2018-19 to fulfill the domestic requirements as well as for exporting.

Meanwhile, he said wheat procurement in Sindh Province had reached to 800,000 tons as against the set target of 1.4 million tons during the current season.

This year, he said that the government had decided to procure about 6.1 million tons of the grains to fulfill the domestic requirements as well as for keeping the strategic reserves to tackle with any unwanted situation in the country.

He said the Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet had fixed the support price of wheat for current season at Rs 1,300 per 40 kg to provide better rate of return to the growers and to facilitate them as well as saving them from the exploitation of middle man in the country.

The PASSCO has procured about 138,490 metric tons of wheat as it had established about 230 wheat procurement centers and in this regard the whole country was divided into zones for enhancing the outreach of the corporation.

PASSCO had divided Punjab into 11 zones, where as it had established two zones in Sindh and one in Balochistan provinces respectively to encourage farmers to sell their produces at the nearest wheat procurement centers of the corporation.

The PASSCO would procure about 900,000 tons of wheat during current wheat procurement campaign, where as it would distribute about 9 million bags among the farmers.