ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday decided to allow the private sector to export one million tonnes of wheat after a three-year ban, finance ministry officials said.

“The government has allowed the private sector to export one million tonnes of wheat,” one of the officials said after a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), the government's highest economic decision-making body.

He did not elaborate. Pakistan banned wheat exports in 2007 because of shortages and high prices in the domestic market.

Pakistan, Asia's third-largest wheat producer, deferred plans in August to export 2 million tonnes of surplus wheat, after summer floods washed away at least 725,000 tonnes of the grain and raised concern about the next crop.

Traders said in early November that despite damages from summer floods, Pakistan still has a surplus for export as wheat stocks soared this year after a bumper crop of 23.86 million tonnes in 2009-10, with a carryover of 4.2 million tonnes from the previous crop.

The central government in November set an ambitious target of 25 million tonnes of wheat from the 2010-11 crop, despite vast damage to farmland in Punjab and in southern Sindh province.