ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of National Food Security and Research, in collaboration with provincial food departments, has finalized all arrangements to procure about 7.5 million tons of wheat on government fixed rates to facilitate the growers across the country.
"Wheat harvesting has started in Mirpur Khas Division of Sindh province and Provincial Food Department has also started procurement of grains from the farmers at government fixed rates of Rs 1300 per 40 kg", said a senior official of the Ministry of Food Security.
Talking to APP here on Wednesday, he said that earlier the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet had approved the procurement of 7.5 million tons of wheat during the current procurement campaign.
The procured commodity would help boost the domestic strategic reserves for food security as well as to fulfill the domestic consumptions besides exporting the commodity, he added.
He said Punjab had been given a task to procure 4.5 million tons of wheat during current procurement campaign and Sindh would procure about 1.1 million tons.
Meanwhile, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would procure 0.35 million tons and Balochistan would procure 0.10 million tons of wheat during recent campaign, he added.
The Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) would procure 01 million tons across the wheat growing areas of the country on officially fixed rates to facilitate the growers to sell their produces.
Meanwhile, he said the crop outlook was good as reported by the field formation adding the recent spell of rains might cause delay in crop harvesting for couple of weeks due to more rains during current month.
He further said the wheat harvesting campaign in Punjab usually starts from mid of April but due to rain forecast it is expected to start by May first.
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