KARACHI, April 16: More than 60,000 tons of wheat is being shipped to Iraq in two vessels late this month and next month following an approval of the samples by the Iraqi authorities, officials said on Tuesday.

These two shipments replace the ones Iraq has rejected last year on the grounds that the wheat does not conform to their specifications.

Sources said that a two-member team of Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Supplies Corporation (PASSCO) carrying wheat samples recently visited Baghdad for getting approval from the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi government, after testing the samples in a laboratory, gave its consent because the wheat was fulfilling their specification in term of its contents and properties.

Pakistani wheat, which is of “hard milling” quality met the Iraqi specifications, which demands 28 per cent gluten and 14 per cent moisture. However, Baghdad gave some relaxation by allowing average gluten of 26 per cent.

Baghdad has urged Pakistan that it should ensure that elements such as stones and mud should be checked strictly and the process of cleaning the produce should be undertaken with utmost care.

According to tentative schedule the first ship-load of 35,000 tons would leave Port Qasim by end of this month or early next month and the second ship of equal load would be leaving by end-May, the sources said.

The sources said that under the new arrangement, PASSCO and government of Punjab have been asked to arrange and prepare 31,000 tons each for timely wheat shipment to Baghdad.

In order to ensure proper sieve and cleaning of the wheat consignments to Baghdad the Punjab government has installed 26 machines for de-stoning which was being done manually so far, official sources said.

Early last year Pakistan entered into agreement with Baghdad for supply of 100,000 tons of wheat under UN programme of oil-for-food. Under this agreement three ship-loads of equal quantity were to be shipped for Baghdad.

After accepting first ship load of 34,000 tons of wheat in August last year, the following two consignments of wheat loads were rejected by Baghdad on the ground that percentage of foreign elements in the wheat was little higher than the Iraqi specifications.

Import of wheat by Iraq helped Pakistan to appear on the world wheat export map for the first time.

Much of food grains to rich Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq are supplied by Canada, USA and Australia which are technically well advanced and have proper infrastructure to handle entire shipments.