Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (Passco) has received expressions of interest (EoI) from 160 rice mills of the province to lease their facilities to the Corporation for paddy procurement and processing. "However, out of these 160 mills only 100 have submitted draft of earnest money as desired by the Corporation with the application", sources in the Corporation told Business Recorder, here on Tuesday.
The sources said that special committees comprising technical and engineering wings of the Corporation would be constituted to visit these 100 mills to physically inspect that these have latest machineries, rice dryers, husking facilities, generators and other facilities which could help the Corporation.
After these visits, mills having satisfactory facilities, and could perform according to the requirements of the Corporation, would be short listed and then would be invited for negotiation on lease money, the sources added.
It may be added here that according to the decision of the government, the Corporation had decided to start procurement of paddy (super basmati) in specified areas of the province from November 01, 2009. While the Corporation wanted to initiate paddy procurement in Sindh at the earliest, and in this regard another meeting with the rice mills would be held in Larkana today (Wednesday), the sources said and added that the Federal Minister for Food and Agricutlure (Minfa) and Corporation's high-ups had already reached there.