A positive beginning has indeed been made by the Sindh government towards wheat procurement for the 2026 crop through the food department, which deals exclusively with the crop’s procurement and management. After discontinuing the annual procurement under International Monetary Fund (IMF) requirements in 2024-25, Sindh has reverted to crop procurement to support farmers.

The Punjab government gave up procurement two years ago and will not deal with it in the 2025-26 cropping season either. It has instead entrusted the job to the private sector to procure, finance, store, maintain and supply strategic reserves, with the government restricting itself to an oversight and regulatory role.

Sindh, however, has introduced a couple of new measures. It will procure grain from farmers with 1-25 acres of land under the Benazir Hari Card at Rs3,500 per 40kg. Only those farmers will sell their grain who have availed a bag of DAP, or diammonium phosphate, and two bags of urea fertiliser per acre each under the “Sindh Wheat Growers Support Programme”, involving a cost of Rs84 billion for the subsidy. The food department aims to procure one million tonnes of wheat. Its procurement was supposed to commence on April 1, but it is now hampered because of the rains.

A look at procurements from 2017-18 to 2023-24 showed that the procurement target of 1.4m tonnes was met only in 2017-18 and continually missed thereafter. This year, eligible cardholders/farmers can sell grain in their 50kg polypropylene bags at the support price of Rs8,750 per 100kg to receive the amount in their accounts. They won’t be dependent on bardana supplies from the food department any longer. The step was understandably laudable as it aims to ensure transparency.

‘Stocks over and above 0.7m tonnes are kept in open spaces instead of safe places to have an excuse that stocks were damaged by rains’

Nonetheless, structural issues — inefficient grain storage, stockholding, and wheat releases — remained unaddressed, causing billions of rupees in losses to the provincial exchequer. These matters of significant importance merit serious attention from the government.

The fresh wheat policy was, however, silent on it; thus, challenges and vulnerabilities remained the same. The provincial food department works under a full-fledged ministry, but rarely does a year pass without it facing the stigma of misappropriation, adulteration, damage, and rotten wheat, leading the government to institute criminal proceedings against officials.

The same old story was repeated in 2026, leading to punitive actions, including the dismissal of officials for financial indiscipline, adulteration, and damage to crops. A physical inspection of stocks was done by the department before the 2026 procurement under the supervision of Chief Secretary Sindh Asif Hyder Shah. Such stocks were procured over the last few years.

The inspection revealed that the food department had a stock of close to 1.4m tonnes as of July 2025. According to Sindh Food Secretary Ghulam Abbas Naich, the department spent Rs14,650 per 100kg bag to store the stocks. It includes mark-up, fuel, fumigation and transportation costs.

During the inspection, a shortage of over nine per cent or 126,000 tonnes of wheat was recorded; 45,000 tonnes of wheat or 3.35pc was damaged; an equal quantum of 45,000 tonnes or 3.39pc was adulterated. Out of 1.4m tonnes, close to a million tonnes of wheat had been released to millers, traders and chakki owners. One must not lose sight of the fact that no third-party audit of past procurements has been done to date.

The cost of 126,000 tonnes of misappropriated wheat alone stood at Rs12.60bn as such stocks were by and large procured for Rs4,000/40kg in 2022-23 & 2023-24, while the cost of these stocks’ storage at the rate of Rs146,650/100kg could be additionally assessed accordingly.

The entire cost is covered by the public purse. The inspection showed that until March 30, the food department had a 0.2m tonnes carryover stock to be sold through auction. Besides 0.2m tonnes, the department plans to auction damaged and adulterated wheat, totalling around 90,000 tonnes. Officials hoped that adulterated grain might be sold at 60pc of 2026’s issue price of Rs8,000 per 100kg wheat, whereas damaged grain could fetch 50pc of this price.

So, with this background and in the absence of an efficient storage system, the government plans to buy a million tonnes of wheat. A recently formed Cabinet Committee on Food was tasked with revamping the food department and improving its operational functioning, besides supervising the auction/sale of stocks; evaluating the state of 2022’s damaged stocks and their disposal; identifying delinquent officials and taking appropriate action against them. “Revamping cannot be achieved overnight. There have been proposals for improving storage. We have engaged IBA Sukkur in this regard,” said Food Minister Makhdoom Mehboob Zaman.

Stats-wise, the department has a storage capacity of 736,000 tonnes in its godowns. This, too, probably, was not all covered spaces. For storing grain over and above this quantity, the department hires private godowns to store in covered and uncovered accommodations. Several years back, there was talk of building silos to hold grains. Nobody has heard of it since then.

While Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) president Mehmood Nawaz Shah was appreciative of the fact that procurement was linked with Hari Card, he still believed that the policy was devoid of the causes of losses that always happen in storage. “These losses run into tens of billions of rupees due to spoilage, pests, and rains. These losses are avoidable and are attributed to subsidies for growers, which is actually a management failure otherwise,” he noted.

He asserted that an entire provincial ministry was dedicated to the wheat crop alone. “But it is not doing its work properly, although it should have been able to store grain as per international storage standards and best practice,” he remarked.

According to him, the new wheat policy therefore does not clearly identify, nor does it commit, that these losses won’t occur in the future. “The food department has seemingly left this smokescreen to again repeat the story and linked it with subsidy to growers, although it remains an ineptness of the department to keep it the old way,” he added.

Sindh Chamber of Agriculture Vice President Nabi Bux Sathio concurred with Mr Shah’s contentions on the best international storage standards and their poor management, which elude stock management. “Stocks over and above 0.7m tonnes are kept in open spaces instead of safe places to have an excuse that stocks were damaged by rains,” he said.

Unfortunately, he added, stocks worth billions of rupees were either lost or stolen, and embezzled at official godowns.

The food department’s own actions were evidence of the fact that public money has gone down the drain once again due to storage-related practices. The department never shared periodic reports of wheat bought and sold. What prevents it from sharing the position and quality of stocks every month with stakeholders is anybody’s guess.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 6th, 2026