September 6, 2003	Saturday	Rajab 8, 1424

ISLAMABAD, Sept 5: A meeting of the Wheat Disposal Committee at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) scheduled to be held here on Saturday has been put off indefinitely.

The reason, a ministry source told Dawn, was the departure of the agriculture secretary for Cancun, Mexico, the venue of the WTO ministerial conference.

Meanwhile, he said Food and Agriculture Minister Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind had directed the MINFAL officials to release the wheat from the government stocks on the basis of historical releases of recent years during the six or seven months prior to the next harvest in Sindh.

He said the ministry was satisfied about the availability of sufficient wheat in the country, because the government had nearly 0.4 million tons in its own godowns, while the private sector, including middlemen as well as big landlords, too had stocked over 0.7 million tons in their own storage houses.

The thing to be watched would be whether the government would release wheat in order to stabilize the market now characterized by the cloth-like precision witnessed in the increase in prices of wheat and wheat flour, the claims of a bumper crop notwithstanding, remarked a market observer.

The minister while talking to Dawn recently argued that the private sector had spent Rs6.5 billion which they must recover.

One wonders as to why the government refused to raise the minimum support price of wheat beyond Rs300, while deciding to let the private sector obtain credit at a mark-up of over seven per cent so that they might purchase wheat at the rates above Rs300.