LAHORE: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will begin lifting 100,000 tonnes of wheat from Punjab after Eidul Azha.

The Punjab Food Department had procured the grain on the request of the KP government under a government-to-government arrangement.

Punjab Food Director Danish Afzaal says the KP government will pay around Rs1,937 per maund, including official support price of Rs1,800 plus incidental charges to the tune of around Rs137 per maund, for the wheat, while Peshawar will make arrangements for transportation of the consignments on its own.

“The KP government earlier used to get wheat through private contractors, who would usually purchase grains from Sargodha and Faisalabad divisions. But, it had been requested this season to get atta (wheat flour) as much as required but not to disturb the market by contracting out the wheat supplies to private players. It was suggested to instead get the supplies through G2G arrangement,” he explained.

He said the private contractors from KP would focus on Sargodha and Faisalabad divisions and even then the procurement ratio there would not cross 70 per cent. Whereas the food department had taken the ratio up to 110pc in Sargodha and 100pc in Faisalabad division, he added.

A wheat deficient province, KP consumes around 1.2 million tonnes per annum, whereas it produces only 100,000 tonnes of grain. Pakistan Agricultural Storage & Services Corporation Ltd will provide 0.5m tonnes, and the rest of the requirement will be met through imports.

The Federal Committee on Agriculture had fixed 900,000 hectares wheat sowing target for KP to produce 1.7mt of grain.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2021