ISLAMABAD: The wheat procurement campaign across the wheat producing areas in the Punjab Province will start from May 7 (Monday) which was earlier scheduled to kick-off with the begging of current month.
An official in the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) told APP here on Thursday that wheat procurement operation was delayed due to current rain and cold spell across the country.
He informed that because of rains the moisture exists in the fields which makes it difficulties for the growers to harvest their crops with combine harvesters and thrashing it.
The crop with 10 percent moisture is acceptable for procurement as it is the set standard for procurement but the crop exceeding the set criteria of moisture will not able to procure as it is feared to be spoiled during storage, he added.
Meanwhile, he said that all the arrangements were also finalized to start the wheat procurement campaign for the year 2012-13 which will begin by the end of current month.
In this regard, he said that PASSCO has established 220 centers in 11 zones across the country to start its wheat procurement campaign for the year 2012-13.
All the logistic arrangements have been finalized to procure about 2 million tons of wheat to fulfill the domestic requirements as well as keeping the strategic stocks and export, he added.
The corporation has divided the country in 11 zones and established 220 centers, he said adding that Punjab was divided into nine zones, while Sindh and Balochistan both are considered as single zone.
For the wheat procurement operation 2012-13, he said PASSCO has arranged 15 million jot bags for the growers to facilitating them to sell their out-put at official fixed cost of Rs.1050 per 40 kg.
He further said about eight bags per acre would be provided to the growers on showing the land revenue records to keep transparency during the campaign.
The PASSCO was striving to provide more bags for the growers having less than 10 acre land without further inquiry to sell their produces.
It may be recalled that wheat crop was set a cultivation target of over 22.7 million acre across the country to produce 25 million tons to fulfill the domestic consumptions as well as to export.
In Punjab, it was cultivated over 16 million acre as against the set target of 16.95 million acre to produce 19.2 million tons, in Sindh 2.5 million acre against the fixed targets of 2.7 million acre to get out-put of 3.2 million tons.
In Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa wheat was cultivated over 0.6 million acre and 1.78 million acre respectively as against the set targets of 0.8 and 1.5 million acre respectively.
In Balochistan and KP the crop out put was fixed at 0.8 million and sown over 1.5 million tons for the period under review.
The total wheat output across the glob is expected to remain 665-670 million tons as against it consumption of 680 million tons globally.
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