LAHORE: In order to maintain strategic wheat reserves, the Punjab Food Safety and Consumer Protection (FS&CP) Department has decided to retain wheat stocks of 2.5 million metric tonnes on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis.

FS&CP Secretary Dr Kiran Khurshid said the procurement price for strategic wheat reserves would be fixed at the import parity price, set at Rs3,500 per 40kg.

Wheat procurement would be carried out directly from farmers’ farmhouses or from their doorsteps, and all payments and records related to wheat would be digitised.

She said a fully digital monitoring system would be operationalized to ensure transparency in wheat quality, quantity and payments to farmers.

Dr Khurshid said the private-sector aggregators would be allocated districts after pre-qualification and the ‘request for proposal’ process. The selection of aggregators would be made through competitive bidding based on profit margins and financing costs with preference given during pre-qualification to those offering lower profit and lower financing costs.

Dr Kirani Khurshid asserted that the pre-qualified private-sector aggregators would be responsible for arranging all primary financing and would be paid a guaranteed profit, with an upper limit ranging from 10pc to 16pc. The aggregators would be provided guaranteed profit (up to an upper limit of 10 to 16pc during supply months) and financing at an upper limit of KIBOR plus 1pc on 70pc of the primary financing.

These payments would be made during the supply months, from September to March, at the time of utilisation of the reserves.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2026