KARACHI, Oct 25: Pakistan may reject all bids for wheat export in the face of expectations of high demand in coming months for emergency food supplies for Afghan refugees, government officials and traders said on Thursday.

They said state-owned wheat supply agencies were keen to strike deals with UN aid agencies, where prices were higher than those quoted by exporters bidding on the last two wheat sale tenders.

A senior official at Pakistan’s Food and Agriculture Ministry said state wheat suppliers had failed to bid reasonable prices for an export tender last week for 200,000 tons of wheat.

“Bid prices were too low...we recommended at a meeting of the bids price review committee to reject all the bids as UN aid agencies are quoting much more higher prices,” a senior official in the province of Punjab told Reuters from Lahore.

The state-run Trading Corporation of Pakistan is organizing a sale tender of 200,000 tons of wheat held by the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Supplies Corporation (Passco) and the Punjab provincial government.

The TCP received bids ranging from $92 to $105.59 a ton, but said it was only willing to sell the wheat for export at a minimum $108/ton FOB Karachi.

“We consider these bids simply too low and have formally counter-bid at $108 a ton,” a TCP official said.

But the agriculture ministry official said a review of possible wheat stocks for export was under way.

“The price factor is also there but after demand for Afghan refugees we have to review our stock positions and then will decide whether to go for further exports or not,” he said.

Islamabad has offered to sell one million tons of wheat at commercial prices to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to help feed Afghan refugees.

An official earlier said the WFP asked to buy 300,000 tons of Pakistani wheat for Afghan refugees, after having bought 12,000 tons at $130/ton.

The UN estimates that up to 7.5 million Afghans, suffering from years of civil conflict, a severe drought and the US-led strikes, could need food assistance during the coming winter.

Another official said low bids from exporters, if accepted, would increase Passco losses.

“We paid 300 rupees for every 40 kg, which comes to 7,500 rupees ($121.46) per ton... Passco has also spent transportation and storage costs...so our wheat prices are about $140 per ton and lower to it would only be a net loss,” he said.

“Our good quality wheat is same like the SWW (Soft Winter White) wheat of the US... They are quoting $148 per ton FOB for three months delivery, while we are selling it at $104-105 per ton...it is a total loss,” the official said.

Pakistan, which produced 18.9 million tons of wheat in 2000/01 and has 3.5 million tons stockpiled from the previous year’s bumper harvest of 22m tons, had planned to offer price incentives to private wheat dealers to boost exports, but the scheme never materialised.—Reuters