Food dept signs MoU for 300,000 tonnes of wheat

Rate of wheat flour fixed at Rs43 per kg, current price is Rs46 per kg

The Sindh food department has signed a memorandum of understanding for the procurement of 300,000 tonnes of wheat with the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO).

Talking to the media, provincial food minister Hari Ram Kishori Lal said that his department had previously procured 100,000 tonnes of wheat from PASSCO. He stated that this wheat was being supplied to flour mills at subsidised rates, with the federal and provincial governments covering 50 percent of the cost.

Lal further said that the Sindh food department had fixed the rate of wheat flour at Rs43 per kilogramme with the consensus of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association. While the current price is Rs46 per kilogramme, he claimed that it would fall within a week. He maintained that the supply of wheat to the flour mills at subsidised rates meant that consumers too should receive the benefits of this, adding that strict action would be taken against the mills and retailers selling wheat flour at exorbitant rates.

According to the food minister, Sindh has sufficient wheat for its requirements until the next crop season. He said that the provincial government had decided not to procure wheat during the last season as it had 800,000 tonnes of the crop stored in its godowns.

Strict measures: Govt suspends wheat quota of several mills for misappropriation

Meanwhile, PASSCO general manager Col (retd.) Tanveer Ahmed said that 450,000 tonnes of wheat had been supplied to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 100,000 tonnes to Sindh and 50,000 tonnes to Balochistan on the provinces' demand. He added that the MoU was signed to provide additional wheat in order to provide relief to the people.

Suspended supply

PASSCO had previously suspended the supply of wheat to the Sindh government after the latter's failure to make timely payments for the previous consignment of the crop, raising fears of a wheat shortage in Sindh, particularly in Karachi.

The first consignment was dispatched to Sindh in the middle of November. However, non-failure of payment for the consignment within the stipulated time had forced PASSCO to suspend the supply.

Meanwhile, flour mill owners who had paid the Sindh food department in advance for 90,000 sacks of wheat were left waiting for their consignments. The chairman of the Sindh Flour Mills Association, Khalid Masood, had told The Express Tribune that the supply of wheat to flour mills by both the provincial food department and PASSCO had been suspended since November 28.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2019.