The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (Unisame) on behalf of SME rice exporters have requested the Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Smeda) CEO Shahab Khawaja to take up the matter of Pre-shipment Inspection (PSI) of basmati rice with the commerce ministry and request them to remove the conflict of interest created due to the Quality Review Committee (QRC), which is managed by the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (Reap) itself.
Unisame President Zulfikar Thaver pointed out that basmati rice is subjected to PSI by the quality review committee and some rice exporters approached the Sindh High Court (SHC) which ordered the commerce ministry not to compel rice exporters to become members of Reap, and secondly, directed them to nominate any other neutral PSI agent to inspect cargo of the petitioners and accordingly the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) was appointed.
The SME rice exporters have now contacted the TCP and urged it to carry out PSI of their cargo on the grounds that it is not required nor possible for every SME exporter to obtain orders from the SHC individually, whose orders are explicit and very clear, and we have to learn and derive lesson from them and the government must act accordingly in the best interest of justice.
Smeda CEO Shahab Khawaja suggested that the TCP should be allowed to carryout PSI of exporters who are not comfortable with the QRC and as such he said that PSI is the prerogative of the buyer and if the buyer nominates a PSI company of his choice there should be no double PSI. He said PSI by any registered company should be acceptable.-PR