Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (Passco) has planned to construct steel silos at a cost of $45 million, which will have a capacity of storing 6, 50,000 metric tons of wheat, and 80 percent of the cost will be financed by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).
The Corporation at present has storage capacity of 4, 30,000 metric tons and intends to increase to 1.5-2 million tons in next three years. According to the plan, IDB will extend 80 percent of the total project cost of constructing steel silos while the Pakistan government would give rest of the 20 percent. The Corporation has identified 22 feasible sites in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan for construction of these silos. Soil testing of these sites had already been started and the Corporation would buy the place only after finding it fit for the construction.
This was disclosed by the Managing Director Passco, Major General Sohail Shafkat while talking to Business Recorder here on Monday. He said the Bank had already approved the financing amount and Ministry of Finance (MoF) is negotiations with the Bank to finalise the rate of mark-up, he added. He said that the project will be completed in three years and Rs 650 million will be spent in 2010-11, Rs 1600 million in year 2011-2012 and Rs 2300 million in the financial year 2012-2013.
Sohail Shafkat further said that besides construction of these silos, the Corporation also intends to introduce bulk carriage trucks. These would handle wheat in bulk and there would be dedicated trucks with each silos. These trucks would go to the field, lift the wheat, come back and then put the wheat in these silos, where these would be stored. This would help eradicate use of gunny bags in the process of buying wheat from growers till storing, thus saving the money spent on buying of these bags every year, he added. Managing Director Passco also said that there is also another plan to construct house type godown having capacity of 0.5 million tons of wheat.
Major General Sohail Shafkat said that the Corporation was set up by the government with basic objectives of procuring different commodities including wheat, rice, pulses, onion etc on the directives of the Federal government to ensure that farmers could get suitable and better payment of their production and stabilise prices in the market.
It also buys wheat from the growers and stores it and provides it to wheat deficient areas of the country, including the forces. As far as the stocks available with the Corporation, he said, that presently the Corporation had around 17, 25, 000 metric tons of wheat in its stocks. Regarding damage to the stocks due to rains or flood water, sources claimed that the administration took timely steps after receiving warnings, thus managed to save its stocks. They said that the Corporation at various centres constructed embankments from four feet to six feet high, which helped stopping flood or rainwater entering the centers. Similarly, three water dispensing sets for each centre were also allocated to save the centres and the stocks from floodwater.