KARACHI, March 26: An official delegation would leave for Cairo soon to hold talks with the Egyptian official for the removal of quarantine conditions on wheat import from Pakistan, official sources said Tuesday.

Besides the TCP officials, the team will comprise technical experts who would sort out the matter with their Egyptian counterpart.

The sources said once the quarantine condition is removed Pakistan could easily cater to the wheat import needs of Egypt up to one million tons per annum. Egypt imports around six million tons of wheat.

Despite a ban on wheat import from Pakistan for being infected with ‘Karnal Bunt’ disease caused by smut-ball fungus of genus ‘Tilletia’, a private party of Egypt recently imported around 25,000 tons wheat.

The Egyptian importer lab-tested the sample of Pakistani wheat and did not find any such disease. The company’s chief executive recently led a delegation to Islamabad to negotiate import of up to 300,000 tons.

As the disease of ‘Karnal’ is named after a wheat growing area in India, therefore, it had been commonly known that Pakistani wheat may have a similar problem which is not true, the sources said. Pakistan is keen to remain a regular exporter of wheat in the world market even if it has to contribute a small quantity up to 500,000 tons.

In order to achieve this goal the government has framed wheat export policy, which assigns private sector the job to export wheat at Rs8500 per ton and get refund on the export incidentals up to Rs3500.