KARACHI, Oct 14: Iraq has shown keen interest in importing another 500,000 tons of upgraded wheat of ‘hard winter’ quality from Pakistan, official sources said.
Iraq’s intention to buy half a million tons from Pakistan follows successful completion of earlier contract of one million tons.
A cargo vessel recently offloaded around 30,000 tons of wheat at the Iraqi port, replacing the earlier one, has successfully brought to an end the earlier contract of 0.1 million tons won by Pakistan under UN programme of ‘oil-for-food’ for Baghdad.
Sources said the Iraqi Grain Board had expressed its satisfaction over the quality and specification of Pakistani wheat which entirely met their standards and demand.
Pakistani wheat, which is of “hard milling” quality, met the Iraqi specification that demands 28 per cent gluten and 14 per cent moisture. However, Baghdad gave some relaxation by allowing average gluten of 25 per cent. However, Baghdad urged Islamabad that it should ensure that elements such as stones and mud be checked strictly and process of cleaning the produce be undertaken with utmost care, sources said.
In another development, Trading Corporation of Pakistan chairman Syed Masood Alam Rizvi told Dawn that he would be heading a wheat delegation to Egypt from Oct 19-20.
He said the delegation comprising 4-5 members of the private sector exporters would negotiate export of wheat with Cairo.
Egypt, he said, imported around six million tons of wheat annually, out of which half of the quantity was handled by its private sector.
Under the new policy, he said further exports of wheat to Iraq would be carried out by the private sector under the supervision of TCP.
MR RIZVI SAID: “TCP’s involvement was on the request of Baghdad and not our demand.”
Refuting some media reports that the last vessel, loaded with 30,000 tons of wheat, had been rejected by Baghdad, the TCP chairman said the vessel ‘Silver AN’ had already unloaded its cargo as the quality fully met the Iraqi Wheat Board specifications.
He further said that after meeting other cost, including freight, insurance, etc., the per ton price of wheat unloaded by the last vessel came at around 144 euro per ton fob and with this, the contract of 100,000 tons with Baghdad had been concluded successfully.
Despite the fact that country could not meet its wheat production target of 20 million tons this year and only harvested around 18.50 million tons, but huge carryover stocks of around 3.7 million tons will still enable it to export around two million tons, official sources said.
Accordingly, the government has offered generous incentives to exporters in the form of export rebate. The minimum export price fixed by the government is Rs8,250 per ton. The exporters will qualify for export rebate at the rate of Rs4,200 per ton.
