LAHORE, May 16: The government may decide to import wheat at the next meeting of the Federal Wheat Disposal Comm-ittee on May 24. According to sources in the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) , the decision had been dictated by the crop size and procurement in the private sector.

The crop size, which the Punjab was putting around 16.1 million tons at the beginning of the season, had been revised to 15.8 million tons, but the market position created doubts even about the revised estimate, according to a source.

The role of the private sector, which the government had tried to curtail, also created confusion about the crop size. Informal buyers, not within the departmental net, had been procuring wheat and no one knew their stocks' size.

Farmers also started holding wheat in the hope of better profits later in the year. All these problems had forced a change in government's thinking with regard to import of wheat, he said.

Though there was no immediate wheat crisis, the government did not want to wait till the last moment - like it did last year - and let the market situation worsen, he maintained.

In spite of best efforts of the Punjab government, the agencies involved in wheat procurement, the food department and the Pakistan Agriculture Services and Storage Corporation, had not been able to get even near the target.

The Punjab food department was still hovering around 1.96 million tons against a target of 3.5 million tons and Passco at 677,000 tons against a target of 1.4 million tons.

The arrival of wheat with both of them had come down to half of the early purchases - from over 80,000 tons daily to around 30,000 tons in case of the Punjab food department and from 25,000 tons to 7,000 tons in case of Passco. Both faced a further dip in the days to come.

Both the agencies would fall short of the target by at least 1.5 million tons even in the best of circumstances. This shortfall had to be met by the federal government in time. Otherwise, the private sector might be in a position to make windfall profits and create social chaos, like it did last year, he said.

Another fear leading to wheat import was that Punjab might ban the movement of flour after its failure to achieve targets. According to reports with Punjab, over 4,000 tons of flour was going to other provinces.

The province had also expressed its inability to sustain this haemorrhage on a long-term basis, specially if it was not able to fill its coffers as per food security requirements.

If Punjab stopped flour movement in the name of food security as it did in case of wheat, the federation might be left in the lurch. In order to pre-empt all these possibilities, the federal government had decided to import wheat at the earliest, he claimed.

The meeting of the Federal Wheat Disposal Committee on May 24 would be crucial in this regard. A decision in June meant that wheat would actually be arriving somewhere in September.

Till then, the country was safe. Such a decision would also force hoarders and the farmers who were holding crop for better profits later in the year, to release their stocks and further ease the situation, he claimed.