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Food security: NA body opposes food ministry’s devolution

Planning Commission asked to allocate funds to the ministry under PSDP.

Peer Muhammad May 23, 2011

ISLAMABAD:

The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Food and Agriculture on Monday recommended that the Ministry of Food and Agriculture should not be devolved to the provinces under the 18th Amendment since food security is a burning issue.

The committee met under the chairmanship of MNA Javed Iqbal Warraich at the Parliament House. It asked the Planning Commission to allocate funds to the agriculture ministry under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2011-12.

The committee members also asked the ministry officials to prepare a draft for the Implementation Commission about keeping the ministry with the Centre. It recommended that federal research departments should remain with the federal government and all irrelevant projects should be abolished immediately.

Ministry officials said that 24.21 million tons of wheat production has been achieved this year against the target of 25 million tons. According to the document presented before the committee, an improvement of 3.13 per cent was recorded against last year’s production of 23.3 million tons.

Some of the committee members expressed reservations about reports of corruption and bribery by Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Supplies Corporation (Passco) officials while purchasing wheat from growers.

They said that middlemen face multiple problems in purchasing wheat, therefore, procurement of wheat should be made transparent and the middlemen should be brought in the system.

The committee recommended that the ministry should immediately stop unnecessary projects as most of them had been launched only to accommodate favourite people.

The committee recommended that Passco should start purchase of wheat in Balochistan also.

It also took a serious note that the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council had failed to launch any project for increasing production of pulses for the last nine years, despite shortage of commodity in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2011.

COMMENTS (1)

Anees | 13 years ago | Reply As for as concern, Pakistan produce large weight of wheat crop every season, as this year it is immense crop throughout the year, and that high production put downward pressure on the existing price of wheat and floor at market. What exactly we need at this stage is to look on policy matters and implement them at ground level with full potential, and policy regarding to regularize the flow of wheat from farmer to floor industry, with ground touching realities which exist in real terms. Two years later, we have gone through a major crisis of wheat, which highlighted the loop holes in policy and exactly put questions about what happened. I hope in this Govt planning side experts took those actions which are against that understanding. Its time to realize the wheat prices and purchasing power of poor class to consider in policy, and make best efforts to help them to overcome pathetic situation, as state have this responsibility, and I wish they could fill it ?

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