ISLAMABAD: A Senate penal, in its report has held provincial governments responsible for the recent artificial wheat crisis in the country.
Millions of Pakistanis, few weeks back, faced one of the worst wheat crisis in recent years when price of flour jumped many times prescribed rate. In some cases the wheat flour-a staple food in the county, was being sold at Rs. 750 per 10kg bag.
The incumbent Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf led regime had to face strong criticism from political rivals and public wrath.
The standing committee of Senate on National Food Security headed by Senator Muzafar Hussain Shah probed the reasons behind the crisis, which directly affect the common and poor citizen of the country.
The penal has submitted its final report along with recommendation to the secretariat of the Upper House of Parliament.
According the documents available with The News Today, the senate body held responsible the provincial governments particularly Punjab and Sindh, the largest wheat growers and procurer provinces for the artificial crisis involving the managerial negligence by bureaucracy and incompetency ruling regimes in both provinces.
The final report of senate’s standing committee on National Food Security comprising recommendations as well revealed that federal committee on agriculture in its meeting held on October 2018, fixed the wheat production target tunes to 25.51million tons from the area of 8.833 million hector land.
However, at the final stage of crop maturity, the hail storm and wind reduced the production to the level of 24.479million tons Indicating a loss of around 5 percent which included 10 percent stock on account of strategic seed and feed purposes.
The production of wheat was recorded 24.79 million tons and left over stocks of 3.777 million tones as against the national requirement of 26.91 million tons. The ECC of the Cabinet in its meeting in April and May, 2019 approved these targets.
It would be pertinent to note that the Provincial Food procurement targets for PASSCO and Provincial Food Departments respectively were 6.250 million tons but the actual procurement by the Public Sector shows that the wheat procurement was 4.032 million tones which has a shortfall of 35 percent against the procurement targets.
ECC of the Cabinet in November, 2018 allowed the embed of 0.5 million tons of wheat from the public sector through PASSCO and provincial food departments ware also allowed to export wheat as per their request, but only PASSCO exported the required volume, whereas the provincial governments did not export any wheat. The total volume exported by the PASSCO was 163,000 metric tons of wheat.
It was also decided that the provincial governments will bear the entire expense on the export of wheat/wheat products. PASSCO exported the allocated 0.1 million tons through open tendering, however, the provincial governments could not export any wheat despite permission was granted to them.
The province of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) are deficit in production of wheat against their requirements. The Punjab province feeds the KPK province but in the period of April and May the supply was stopped to KPK. The officials said claimed that they did so because they were provided data of wheat production very late in November, 2019.
It was found that crop damage to wheat was more than 2 million tons in the Punjab for crop 2019 and the quality of wheat was severely damaged because of the Yellow Rust attack, and that the revised estimates of the wheat crop based on the data provided, showed a shortage as compared to earlier figures.
In view of the all such circumstances the ECC of the Cabinet imposed the immediate ban on the export of wheat and wheat flour on 17.07.2019, subsequently it also imposed ban on fine flour, Sooji and Meda-some of the by products extracted from wheat flour .
The Ministry of National Food Security & Research stated before the committee that it had recommended to the ECC for imposing ban on export of wheat in the summaries submitted to the ECC of the Cabinet as on 18 June 2019, 25 June 2019 and 28 June 2019.
In the light of above circumstances and to contain the rising trend in the prices of wheat/flour the ECC of the Cabinet on 2nd October 2019, 30th October 2019 and 13th November 2019 allowed the quantity of 1.10 million tons from PASSCO to be released to the provincial governments, this included 0.450 million tons for KPK, 0.40 million tons for Sindh, 0.50 million tons for Balochistan and 0.20 million tons for Utility Stores.
PASSCO said Sindh delayed in lifting wheat, in spite of repeated reminders which led to shortage and rising in prices in Karachi and elsewhere in the province.
The Committee was informed that the wheat crop of 2019 and the procurement by the public sector was short by 3-5 percent because the government of Sindh which procures 1. 4 to 1. 5 million tons of wheat did not procure any wheat. Climate stress not only destroyed a substantial portion of wheat crop but because of the infestation by the Yellow Rust the quality was very adversely affected.
The government of the Punjab being a major public sector procurer started its procurement in May 2019 which was very late and private sector had already purchased a large share of wheat crop.
The Committee believes that wheat is such an important crop that short term and long term strategy should be evolved so as to avert dangerous consequences in the future. It pointed out that with rising trend of population the national wheat consumption for the year 2020 would be in the range of 26.91 million tons, and by 2028 Pakistan would require 34.11 million tons to cater to country’s requirements.
Earlier a probe committee formed by Prime Minister Imran Khan also came up with almost similar reasons for the artificial shortage that affected millions of common people-mostly the down trodden classes.
Read: Wheat crisis investigating committee gives clean chit to all and sundry
It seems all these probes have failed to hold any particular persons or officials responsible for what the poor of the country went through for weeks due to mismanagement and inefficiency of government machinery and gruesome acts of hoarders and profiteers.
With additional input from Zeeshan Javaid
