4.336 MTs wheat available to cater domestic consumption

January 10, 2022: Abundant wheat stocks of 4.336 million tons are available to cater domestic requirement, besides maintaining smooth demand, supply in local markets and ensure provision of flour and other by-products on sustainable rates across the country.

Domestic wheat stocks during first week of last year (2021) were recorded at about 3.188 million tons with carry forward stocks of 731,033 metric tons, said Food Security Commissioner Dr Imtiaz Ali Gopang.

Talking to APP here on Monday he said that public stock was sufficient to cater the civic requirement of 108 releasing days or 4.34 months upto May 20, 2022.

He said that by January 10, 2022 about 2,860,081 metric tons of wheat has been released to flour mills in order to ensure supply of flour at sustainable rates in local markets.

Food Security Commissioner further informed that Punjab Province and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had started their releases from September 24, 2021, whereas Sindh Province started its releases for flour mills from October 17, 2021.

Meanwhile, 1,356,617 metric tons of imported wheat has also arrived, which would help in augmenting the local wheat stocks and discourage any possibility of hording and profiteering in the country, he added.

Besides, he said that wheat sowing during current season had also witnessed positive growth as government announced minimum support price well in time, adding that sowing targets set for the season were achieved by 97%.

Out of the set target of 23.327 million acres, the wheat sowing has been completed over 22.766 million, which was recorded at 22.716 million acres during same period last year.

He informed that Punjab Province had voluntarily enhanced its target to 16.779 million acres from the assigned sowing target of 16.210 mill acres, adding that with this increase, the overall target of wheat sowing has been enhanced to 23.327 million acres from the previous target of 22.758 million acres as was fixed during the meeting of Federal Committee on Agriculture.

According to Provincial Crop Reporting Services wheat sowing was still in progress in many rain fed areas and it was expected to further strengthen the over all sowing figures , adding that Punjab has completed crop cultivation over 100% area set for current season.

However, other provinces including Sindh had completed wheat cultivation over 97.81%, KP 87.01% and Balochistan over 84.77%.

APP