K-P okays Rs3b subsidy for wheat import

The provincial cabinet has approved a plan to provide around Rs3 billion in subsidy on importing wheat.

In a special meeting of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Cabinet on Monday, with Chief Minister Mahmood Khan in the chair, it was decided that to ensure the smooth supply of wheat to flour mills and to stabilise the prices of flour, it was imperative to procure additional wheat.

A statement issued following the cabinet meeting said that the provincial government has decided to import wheat. In the first phase, the province will import 0.15 million tonnes of wheat through the Trade Corporation of Pakistan for Rs8.51 billion.

A similar quantity of wheat will be procured in the second phase of the project.

This way, smooth supply of wheat to flour mills in the province will be ensured apart from keeping the price of flour stable in the province, it read.

CM Mahmood further directed the provincial food department to keep all options open, including the possibility of domestic procurement of wheat. The cabinet also constituted a committee comprising ministers for food, finance, education and secretary food to negotiate with the private sector for domestic procurement of wheat.

Provincial ministers, advisors, special assistants, chief secretary, SMBR, additional chief secretary and administrative secretaries attended the meeting.

Last week, in a meeting with the Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh at the federal finance ministry, K-P Chief Secretary Dr Kazim Niaz had said that the province requires 3 million tonnes of wheat to meet domestic needs.

Of this, half will be procured from the public sector and the rest from the private sector.

Providing a breakdown of their procurement plans, Dr Niaz had said that the provincial government has a stock of around 0.6 million tonnes of wheat. Moreover, it had recently procured 0.1 million tonnes of wheat from the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) while another 0.1 million tonnes was being transported to the province.

He said the provincial authorities planned to procure another 0.3 million tonnes from PASSCO, for which they were already in touch with the corporation. Furthermore, they were also planning to import 0.3 million tons of wheat.

The chief secretary said the provincial government was aiming to have at least 1.5 million tonnes of wheat in its stocks, and the same quantity was likely to be supplied by the private parties to the local market to meet the estimated 3 million tonnes of the wheat requirement for the province until the start of next harvest.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2020.