Farmers oppose Centre’s wheat import plan

Growers fear that price of local wheat will fall if imported wheat is brought to the local market

HYDERABAD: As farmers in Sindh opposed the federal government's decision of importing wheat from Ukraine to address the prevailing wheat shortage in the country, the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture rejected the idea of importing wheat and asked the Centre to give up this plan on Tuesday.

"The government's decision to import 300,000 tonnes of wheat from Ukraine is erroneous," said the chamber's president, Syed Miran Muhammad Shah, in a statement after a meeting. "The decision will render huge financial losses to Sindh's wheat farmers."

The wheat harvest in the province will start in March, while the import process will take more than a month to complete. This has led farmers to fear that the crop price of the local wheat will fall if the imported wheat is brought to the local market.

Shah further argued that the quality of Ukraine's wheat is below par yet it will cause losses to the farmers of the province, who are producing good quality wheat.

On behalf of the chamber, he demanded the provincial government to fix the wheat procurement price at Rs1,500 per 40 kilogrammes. He also called for doubling the government's wheat procurement target from 1.25 million tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 23^rd, 2020.