The Federal government has increased wheat procurement target of the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (Passco) from earlier 1.5 million tonnes to two million tonnes. Sources in the Corporation told Business Recorder here on Friday that they had received the directives from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MinFA) yesterday.
The government keeping in view the better production and to facilitate the growers to the maximum had directed the Corporation to go for procurement of two million tonnes of grain instead of 1.5 million tonnes. The sources said that the Corporation would need another Rs 15 billion tentatively to meet this new buying target. Regarding the procurement, the sources said that the Corporation till Thursday had procured 9,37,910 metric tons of wheat during the on-going wheat procurement drive.
'We are also expecting procurement of around 85,000 metric tons of wheat today (Friday) as a result of which the Corporation would cross the one million tonnes mark,' sources in the field wing of the Corporation told Business Recorder. Giving the break up of procurement, the sources said that the corporation till yesterday had procured 8,92,000 from the province of Punjab, 30,020 metric tons from Sindh and 14,930 metric tons from Balochistan.
Talking about the distribution of gunny bags the sources maintained that they had distributed gunny bags around 1.4 million tons of wheat till date and total available gunny bags with them were around 1.7 million tons of wheat as against the target of 1.5 million tonnes.
Regarding payment to the growers, the corporation officials claimed that they were update in this regard and growers were being paid in time. About the storage capacity, they said that the Corporation already stored its procurement in open places by constructing platforms, which were called as 'ganjis.' So there would be no problem in storing the additional procurement, they concluded.