KARACHI, Oct 6: The Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) on Wednesday clarified a news item in a section of press about the quality of Russian wheat, imported recently.

A TCP announcement said that imported Russian wheat has the same quality specifications as those fixed for Canadian, American and Australian wheat. It falls within the internationally known range of soft white or semi hard white wheat as fixed for all the countries, all necessary tests have been undertaken by the government departments concerned of the Russian government and the internationally recognized pre-shipment inspection agency, SGS, appointed by the TCP.

Russian wheat is supposed to be released to the mills by the provincial Food Departments, in the ratio of 20:80 with domestic wheat. TCP said that some flour mills have made flour out of the imported Russian wheat without even blending with the local wheat and have produced flour of good quality and already sold it in the market without any complaint whatsoever.

It is clarified that moisture level of 12.8 per cent in the Russian wheat is not very high. The Canadian standard specifications of wheat include moisture of 14.5 per cent.

In case the moisture is a little higher, certain flour mills which add extra moisture for undue weight gain, are unable to do so and, therefore, resent using Russian or for that matter any wheat with higher moisture as then they are not able to make undue profit.

The Corporation further clarified that Russian wheat was about $20 per ton cheaper than other imported wheat despite having the same quality. This wheat was already being imported by many countries including Egypt, Algeria, Malaysia, Turkey, Sri Lanka, etc.

The Russian wheat has already been delivered to the provinces of Sindh, Baluchistan and NWFP that have already released it to the flour mills and they have also received no complaints.

The 926,000 tons of wheat contracted by TCP for import is being sourced from Australia (400,000 tons), USA (376,000 tons) and Russia only 150,000 tons. -APP