A meeting of the Technical and Financial Evaluation Committee for the purposes of evaluating the proposed project was held on Thursday, under the chairmanship of the Additional Chief Secretary of Planning and Development. The meeting was attended by the secretaries of food, finance and agriculture departments along with other government officials.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) briefed the attendees on the salient features of the project. It informed them that private investors will build, maintain and operate the storage facilities for 20 years, while the Government of Sindh will pay the concessionaire service charges for the handling and storage of wheat. Private investment in the project will help save precious public resources, the meeting was told. The silos will be able to store wheat, rice, maize and barley as well. The project will benefit the government, millers, farmers and consumers and will ensure the supply of quality wheat at reasonable prices to the markets. Moreover, the public-private partnership agreement will ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability from all stake-holders and reduce pilferage from grain stocks.
Global environmental challenges and the recent devastating floods in Pakistan have necessitated the construction of modern storage facilities to moderate fluctuations in the demand and supply of grains, the meeting was told. An Expression of Interest was unanimously approved for publication by the attendees, so that developers could solicit their proposals at the earliest.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 10th, 2012.
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