KARACHI: All the provincial governments have been urged to release 9.2 million tonnes of wheat for the flour mills.
Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) Sindh Chairman Mian Mahmood Hasan, in a statement, said that a huge wheat stock is lying in the open and in government go-downs for the last two years in different towns and cities, mainly in Sindh.
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He added that the Sindh government possessed about 1.6 million tonnes of wheat, out of which 0.7 million tonnes belonged to last year’s crop. “Sindh has a storage capacity of only 0.3 million tonnes.
“Punjab, on the other hand, has a stock of 5.2 million tonnes that includes 2.2 million tonnes from the last year’s stock. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has 0.4 million tonnes and Balochistan; 0.2 million tonnes. The remaining stock of wheat is with the Pakistan Seed Corporation (PASCO), “he said.
PFMA Sindh Zone’s Chairman claimed that the association had meetings with the Sindh government high-ups and to try and make them realise that holding such a huge stock was not rational, especially when it badly lacked storage facilities. “We still await a decision,” he added.
He said the flour mills association had also offered the Sindh government to pick the wheat stock at Rs32 per kg – the price the government had paid to the growers under the subsidy scheme. “This would ensure the availability of wheat flour at a lower price to the common man.”
