December 12, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 26, 1422

ISLAMABAD, Dec 11: The Agricultural loaning target for the farming community has been refixed at Rs60 billion for the current year against Rs100 billion announced by the Chief Executive, Gen Pervez Musharraf, official sources confirmed on Tuesday.

The target was reduced due to the national and commercial banking sector’s inability to provide the amount estimated by the military regime, informed sources said.

Out of the targeted farming loan only about 25 per cent of the current Rabi crop share has been disbursed and the fear is that remaining 25 per cent will become redundant as the time for crop sowing will be over, the sources said.

The export of Pakistani wheat to the friendly countries, like Iran, continues to be in doubt after the visit of Islamabad by an Iranian delegation last week.

The delegation during meetings with the ministry of food and commerce officials expressed its doubts about quality of Pakistani wheat. The Pakistani authorities offered the Iranians to select wheat for themselves after inspecting stocks in Punjab and those with Passco.

If the Iranians agreed to export Pakistani wheat after physical inspection, they will be purchasing a total of about 300,000 tons of wheat, official sources said, adding which again fell too short of expectations.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has also placed an order of 300,000 tons wheat some of which has already been picked up from NWFP.

With all this, Pakistan will still be in surplus of about 1.2 million tons of wheat with one million tons strategic reserves. Thus a total of 2.2 million tons will be carried over for next year.

Meanwhile, the wheat sowing in Punjab which is estimated to have been done on five per cent more land then previous year is almost complete, while it has been sown on only 70 per cent land in Sindh so far and the process is still continuing to hopefully meet the last year’s target.

Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture Khair Mohammad Junejo told Dawn that against the fear decline in wheat cultivation in Punjab and other provinces due to the government’s refusal to increase its procurement price is over.

The farmers in Punjab and Sindh were badly affected due to the government’s inability to purchase their entire produce of last year, which resulted in going their produce down in the open market.

He feared that the expected short supply of irrigation water may hamper crops in the two provinces.

Junejo expressed his dismay over the low consumption of fertilizers for the current Rabi season and feared that late application may not benefit the wheat crop.