ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Wednesday directed federal and provincial authorities to coordinate closely on wheat supplies, streamline import mechanisms where necessary and keep distribution running smoothly nationwide, as a high-level committee reviewed the country’s grain reserves.
Chairing the committee on the import of wheat, Dar oversaw what his office described as a comprehensive assessment of domestic wheat reserves, projected demand and supply-chain mechanisms, with a focus on ensuring that grain was available and prices stable across all provinces.
Dar stressed the importance of maintaining robust food-security safeguards to protect consumers from market volatility, according to the statement, and called for seamless distribution networks nationwide to ensure maximum public facilitation.
The meeting was attended by the federal minister for national food security and research, Sindh’s minister for food, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Tariq Bajwa, the prime minister’s coordinator on agriculture and food security, the secretaries of national food security and research, commerce, and law and justice, and senior officials from the provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and relevant ministries.
Imports under way
The government decided in August to import one million tonnes of wheat to meet domestic needs and ease prices, and Dar has chaired a series of meetings on the imports since. At the previous session on October 13, he said sufficient supplies had been arranged to meet the provinces’ demand and that the first shipment was due to reach Karachi before the end of October, and urged provinces to use imported stocks together with PASSCO supplies to keep prices stable, according to the state news agency APP.
At an earlier meeting on September 30, the committee directed the Trading Corporation of Pakistan to accept the lowest bids for the 185,000 tonnes still needed by Sindh, and asked Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to arrange payments and complete their agreements with the corporation.∎
