Wasted grain: PFMA calls for release of wheat

Surplus stocks depleting because of weather conditions and insects attack.

KARACHI: Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) has called for the release of wheat to the mills, as 9.2 million tonnes of the stock is possessed by the provincial governments which include a large un-utilised quantity of last year’s crop.

“We fear that a huge wheat stock is lying in the open and in government go-downs for the last two years in different towns and cities, mainly in Sindh,” said PFMA Sindh Chairman Mian Mahmood Hasan.

He added that the Sindh government possessed about 1.6 million tonnes of wheat, out of which 0.7 million tonnes belonged to last year’s crop. “Sindh has a storage capacity of only 0.3 million tonnes.

“Punjab, on the other hand, has a stock of 5.2 million tonnes that includes 2.2 million tonnes from the last year’s stock. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has 0.4 million tonnes and Balochistan; 0.2 million tonnes. The remaining stock of wheat is with the Pakistan Seed Corporation (PASCO), “he said.

PFMA Sindh Zone’s Chairman claimed that the association had meetings with the Sindh government high-ups and to try and make them realise that holding such a huge stock was not rational, especially when it badly lacked storage facilities. “We still await a decision,” he added.

He said the flour mills association had also offered the Sindh government to pick the wheat stock at Rs32 per kg - the price the government had paid to the growers under the subsidy scheme.  “This would ensure the availability of wheat flour at a lower price to the common man.”

He argued that if the provincial governments remained non-serious and failed to offload the wheat stocks to the flour mills, it would be very difficult to secure wheat when the next crop comes up.

A prominent agriculturist and social worker Faqir Faiz Muhammad Hesbani said that the surplus wheat stocks was quickly depleting, mainly because of weather conditions and attack of insects.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2015.

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