ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Kassan Ittehad has serious reservations over Imran-led government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its representatives firmly believe the official decision-makers were delaying fixing of minimum support price of wheat to intentionally harm the farming community of Pakistan.
Pakistan Kassan Ittehad (PKI) is struģgling for more than a month to make the government decjsion-makers realise that delay in fixing of minimum support price will be extremely damaging not for the farmers only, but also for the government as any such situation will result in less domestic production of the crop and subsequently increase Pakistan’s dependency on import of wheat at.least for one more year.
Pakistan has turned into a wheat importing country this year basically due to ill-timed export of wheat and less production of the crop.
The official statistics suggest around 3 million tons gap in demand and supply in the local market.
Pakistan has so for imported around 0.5 m tons commodity and booked another around 1.2 m tons. It cost the national exchequer around 50 million dollars as an average Pakistani importers paid around 270 dollars on import of one ton of wheat.
The remaining similar quantity will cost roughly the same amount to the national kitty.
These statistics are clear enough to make the decision makers realise what Pakistan mean when it will incur $ 100 million on import of wheat ,which could have avoided by taking timely decision and offering incentives to the growers so.that they in a hope to get better price of their grain sow more area and get bumper crop.
If you see the past pattern whenever the growers were given better support price, they produced bumper crop and made Pakistan a wheat exporting country.
But if you anaylise behaviour of the PTI government of the last couple of months , you can reach to a conclusion that the authorities either have no interest in Pakistan’s agriculture sector or they were intentionally damaging this key sector to pose serious problem of food security in Pakistan.
The prime minister’s vision of appointing Dr Hafeez Shaikh and Abdul Razak Dawood as key decision makers for agriculture sector is enough to establish that he has no vision at all or he prefers wrong man for.the right job.
One can easily judge the sense of the prime.minister or his level of understanding that he did not move to resolve the issue of fixing wheat support price even after the killing.of a representative of Kassan Ittehad in police crackdown in Lahore.
Khalid Khokhar,.chairman of Pakistan Kassan Ittehad
is rightful when he wails the prime.minister and his team’s apathy towards the farming community. He believes a strong anti growers gang in the federal cabinet wasted the time of announcing minimum wheat price intentionally to discourage the growers from sowing this crop.
He firmly believes the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) ,headed by Dr Hafeez Shaikh , managed to block every move in the government for fixing.fair support price.of wheat for 2021.
“Let.me.tell you, its a group of Imran Khan’s cabinet comprising Dr Hafeez Shaikh, Abdul Razak Dawood and Nadeem Babar which was responsible of not declaring.minimum.support price of wheat for the next season”, Khalid Khokhar said while talking to NEWSMAN on Monday.
He added the ECC decision of recommending wheat support price of Rs 1650 for 40 kg was a mere tactic to give the growers a message that the government damn cares about your cause. He claimed the fixing of Rs 1650 support price will simply mean giving boost to smuggling of the grain to neighbouring countries where its price will be substantially higher. He questioned who will be the looser if wheat, instead of local consumption, is smuggled to Afghanistan and Central Asian Countries ?
Khokhar also contested the last crop production figures and claimed the local.production in the last season was more.than the consumption, but its huge quantity smuggled to the neighbouring countries , which created the crises of wheat in Pakistan right from the peak of harvesting season.
For the last season wheat support.price was Rs 1400 for 40 kg. Whereas the price of grain in open market shot up to Rs 1800.
As a result the growers preferred commercial buyers over the provincial food departments.
It resulted in missing of buying target by the provincial food departments that stoked the wheat flour prices in the market.
The wheat flour price which was around Rs 42 per kg in May this year has gone job to Rs 65 a kg.
Its spiral effect pushed up prices of every edible making lives of low income group miserable.
