PFMA urges government to formulate policy for disposal of wheat stocks

Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) Central Executive Committee has urged the government to devise a solid policy for disposal of large wheat stocks lying in the country and immediately pay the amounts withheld under the head of exports by the Punjab government. The demand was raised by the CEC of the flour millers held at Quetta the other day with the PFMA Central Chairman Badar Uddin Kakar in the chair.
All the four provincial chairmen Chaudhry Nasir Abdullah, Riaz Ullah Khan, Haji Yousaf Afridi and Syed Zahoor Agha were also present on this occasion. Former central chairmen Asim Raza Ahmad, Muhammad Naeem Butt, Mian Mahmood Hassan and many others participated in this meeting which reviewed the overall situation of wheat and flour in the country.
According to the information reached here on Thursday, the meeting expressed its concern over presence of large quantity of wheat reserves and decaying of two years old wheat lying in warehouses of the food departments. They alleged that Pakistani wheat could not be exported because of its higher rates as compared to the international prices.
They said the government in the year 2015 decided to export surplus wheat and announced rebate on wheat and wheat flour export. Under this policy, flour mills and other exporters succeeded in dispatching 650,000 tons of wheat and export fetching precious foreign exchange. They said though exporters from Punjab, KPK and Balochistan exported wheat under this policy, the Punjab government and Punjab Food Department had stopped payments to the exporters.
They demanded that the Punjab government should immediately pay the stuck up amounts to the flour millers and exporters and devise a policy of exporting wheat and wheat products through sea and road with rebate of 170 US dollars per ton. The flour millers warned that if the stuck up amounts were not released at the earliest and the government did not allow wheat through sea and road, the flour milling industry would stage a sit-in in front of the National Assembly and the Senate. They said they would even go for a country-wide strike to press the government for acceptance of their demands.