Wheat harvest starts in Sindh without support price notification

KARACHI: Wheat growers in Sindh feel letdown as the provincial government has yet to announce the minimum support price for the grains even though the harvest has begun in the some part of the province, farmers’ body said on Friday.

Mehmood Nawaz Shah, senior vice president of famers body Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) said partial harvesting of wheat began in February in some areas of the province.

“It time for the Sindh government to announce a wheat support price, which has remained unchanged since 2018,” Shah said. “The government should have announced the target and support price in July and August so the growers would have sown the crop accordingly.”

Sindh government last month decided to procure 1.4 million tons of wheat from 2019-20 crop, and constituted a committee to evolve a procurement mechanism so the commodity could be procured from genuine and small growers. However, the committee did not announce any support price.

In 2019, the government of Sindh did not procure any wheat from growers, while its support price remained stagnant at the 2018 rate of Rs1,300/40kg.

Shah said on the other hand, the federal government had fixed a minimum price of Rs1,365/40kg for the procurement of wheat by Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) this year.

“Looking at the depreciation of rupee and an increase in the cost of production it is cruelty against farmers if the same rate (Rs1,300/40kg) is fixed as support price,” he said, and urged to fix the price while looking at the wheat flour prices in the market.

“Growers sell wheat at around Rs28/kg to traders, whose flour is sold at Rs70/kg,” Shah said. He said the provincial government should start opening procurement centres “if it wanted to provide relief to the growers and build up its stocks”.

Opening of procurement centres has varied over time in Sindh. At times the provincial government begins procurement in March and in some years it procured wheat in April.

Shah said the provincial government held a meeting with stakeholders around 15 days ago where growers suggested support price of Rs1,500/40kg “but there was neither a follow up to that meeting nor any targets were announced”.

Meanwhile, the federal government has decided to start early wheat procurement campaign this season to maintain its strategic reserves as well as to facilitate growers to sell their produce on official fixed rates, APP reported.

Food Security Commissioner Imtiaz Ali Gopang said the procurement campaign in Sindh would start from March 5.

“Wheat procurement drive in Punjab, the largest grain producing province, will start from April 5 with an aim to facilitate the growers particularly small scale growers,” Gopang told APP.

The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet in its recent meeting had accorded approval to procure 8.25 million tons wheat in total during the current procurement campaign.

Punjab has to procure 4.5 million tons of grains to fulfill domestic requirements as well as to keep strategic reserves of the food grains.

Sindh has been assigned to procure 1.40 million tons of wheat, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa should procure 0.10 million tons of grains during the current procurement drive.

Provinces were assigned procurement tasks after due deliberations and their food departments had agreed to procure assigned targets in order to fulfill their consumption needs, the commissioner added. The federal government has also asked PASSCO to procure 1.80 tons wheat.