Wheat procurement campaign across the country for 2011-12 is now in full swing as provincial food departments and official grains procurement agency PASSCO has so far secured about 3.828 million tonnes of wheat from the growers. An official in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MinFA) told APP that the government would procure about 6.57 million tonnes of wheat to fulfill the domestic requirements as well as for keeping the strategic food reserves in the country.
In Punjab, about 2.16 million tonnes of the commodity has been procured as yet as against the set targets of four million tonnes, he added. He informed that the Sindh province has procured about 1.17 million tonnes in comparison to its procurement targets of 1.3 million tonnes for the year 2011-12. Meanwhile, he said that procurement campaign was also implemented in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan as the provinces has so far purchased about 380,000 tonnes and 54,000 tonnes of wheat, respectively, from growers on official fixed rates of Rs 950 per 40 kg.
The official added that Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) procured about 548,000 tonnes of the commodity as against the targets of 1.3 million tonnes. PASSCO has been given the task to procure 1.3 million tonnes of the commodity adding that it would procure 1.26 million tonnes from Punjab and 40,000 tonnes from Sindh, he added. The organisation has started the wheat procurement in Punjab where it has procured about 233,000 tonnes of wheat from its 176 procurement centers across the province, he added.
The official further informed that PASSCO has established eleven procurement centers in Sindh and fourteen centers in Baluchistan for procuring the commodity. It is also noteworthy that this year, wheat crop has been sown over 8.8 million hectares of land in the country to fulfill the domestic consumption which was 3.5 percent less compared to last year’s figures. Wheat crop has been sown over 6.68 million hectares of land in Punjab, while in Sindh about 1.08 million hectares of land are under wheat crop, he noted.
In Khyber Pakhtun khawa (KPK) wheat was sown over 0.73 million hectares while in Balochistan it was cultivated over an area of 0.32 million hectares. He claimed that the provincial governments in line with the federal government was providing 200 bags for each farmer at an average of 10 bags per acre for small and medium growers for grains packing. Gunny bags have been a scarce commodity in certain localities. Large scale farmers with land of more than 50 acres were provided 500 bags per farmer, he added.
It is pertinent to note that a bumper wheat crop of over 24 million tonnes is expected during current crop season against 22 million tonnes consumed in terms of the domestic requirement.
