ISLAMABAD: The country has missed the wheat sowing target by four percent for the Rabi season 2022-2023 due to heavy rains and floods in the country.
“Wheat has been sown over 21.94 million acres’ area against the set target of 22.58 million acres for the year 2022-23,”, said Wheat Commissioner of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFS&R) Imtiaz Ali Gopang, while briefing the Senate Standing Committee on National Food Security and Research.
Gopang said that out of a total of 21.94 million acres of wheat sowing in the country, wheat has been sown over 15.01 million acres in Punjab, 2.95 million acres in Sindh, 1.93 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and 1.05 million acres in Balochistan.
He said that the country has missed the wheat sowing target by four percent. Senator Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah said that the country is spending $6 billion on the import of wheat and cotton. The spending of foreign exchange would further increase in the upcoming years as the area of sowing both wheat and cotton crops are shrinking, he said.
The chairman said that during the last meeting, the committee had recommended the MNFS&R to take the matter of delay in the announcement of uniform minimum support price (MSP) to the Council of Common Interests (CCI) but so far no step has been taken in this regard. The delay in the announcement of the MSP is one of the main reasons of the decrease in the wheat sowing area.
Secretary MNFS&R Zafar Hasan told the committee that all the provincial governments have fixed wheat MSP per 40kg at Rs3,000 but the provincial government of Sindh unilaterally announced the MSP at Rs4,000 per 40kg due to which the federal government has not taken any decision over the matter.
The federal government has made efforts to convince the Sindh government to announce a uniform MSP but the efforts bear no fruit, he said, adding that announcement of an MSP is the prerogative of the provincial governments.
The committee expressed anger over poor progress on the matter of recovery of cotton cess from the textile industry which is the main source of cotton research. The cotton cess has not been recovered since 2016, committee chairman Shah said.
The parliamentary body summoned the chief secretary Punjab during the next meeting. The committee also expressed concern over the non-payment of salaries to the employees of the Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC). The committee was informed that for the last nine full salaries have not been paid to the employees of the PCCC.
Hasan told the meeting regarding the matter the MNFSS&R had submitted a summary to the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet for supplementary grants of Rs666.640 million for pay and allowance and pension of the PCCC employees.
But the cabinet constituted a committee under the chairmanship of the Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on government effectiveness to deliberate on the issue of the PCCC in a holistic manner and submit recommendations to the ECC for consideration.
The committee asked the MNFS&R to brief it during the next meeting about the progress of the committee headed by SAPM.
The committee also discussed the matter regarding the permission of meat export to Afghanistan and recommended the ministries of commerce and foreign affairs to take up the matter with Afghan authorities.
An official told the committee that Afghanistan has banned the import of meat from Pakistan due to a fatwa passed by a religious head that frozen meat is Haram. This was conveyed by the Afghan minister for commerce in an official meeting at the embassy of Pakistan, he said.
The meeting was also attended by Senator Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahr, Seemee Ezdi, and senior officials of the MNFS&R.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.