April 14, 2002	Sunday	Muharram 30, 1423

ISLAMABAD, April 13: The production of wheat has finally been estimated at 19 million tons this year.

“The final figures received from the provinces show the country is to harvest a wheat crop of 19 million tons,” said the President’s Advisor on Agriculture, Mr Shafi Niaz.

Had there been sufficient rains and no windstorms, wheat production could have exceeded 20 million tons, he said while talking to Dawn.

Last year, the crop size stood at almost 19 million tons and the target of achieving a little over 20 million tons this year could not be managed because of persisting drought and water shortages, he said.

The ministry of food and agriculture has been asked to ensure that four million tons of wheat is procured from farmers this year. Punjab will be procuring three million tons while PASSCO has been told to lift one million tons, informed sources said.

A proposal was also being discussed to fix the wheat support price at Rs320 per forty Kg this year as compared to Rs300 of last year, in order to appease the farmers’ community, the sources said.

The matter was being considered to seek maximum votes from the farmers for getting Gen Pervez Musharraf elected as President for five years at the referendum, the sources added.

However, the situation today is that wheat is not being procured at Rs300 per forty Kg as was earlier decided by the government and that is why the president had to say last week that every grain of wheat will be procured from the farmers as promised. “But this is just to serve as a political slogan for referendum,” said an official of the ministry of food and agriculture.

The government was expecting to export 2 to 2.5 million tons of wheat this year for which private sector was also likely to be roped in, the sources said.

However, because of producing various wheat varieties, the government has not yet been able to fetch good orders for exports. Iran and Iraq wanted to import wheat but later reportedly refused to do so, because in their estimation, the commodity was of inferior quality.

“There is not much demand for our wheat as we are producing 8 to 10 different varieties which are not considered good for international selling and buying,” said a source. He said most of the wheat exporting countries were producing only one variety.

Quite like last year, there will again be a problem of wheat storage because of insufficient and inadequate storage facilities. The issue has been so serious that the president himself had to preside over many meetings to tackle the problem. It was finally decided to engage the private sector in building of more storage facilities.

The officials of the Board of Investment (BoI) and Central Board of Revenue (CBR) were asked to provide necessary support to the private sector to increase storage capacity for wheat.

“This was decided last year that private sector and the floor mills will be offered loans on reduc