Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (Passco) has procured around 860,000 metric tons of wheat during the current campaign across the grain-producing areas of the country.
The corporation had been assigned a task to procure around 900,000 metric tons of wheat during the crop season 2017/18 in order to fulfill the domestic requirements of the staple food, as well as to keep the strategic food reserves of the country, an official of Passco told APP on Monday.
Around 725,500 metric tons of wheat has been procured from Punjab, as the government has established 205 procurement centres across the province in order to facilitate the growers sell their produces at official fixed rates, he added.
Meanwhile, during the current campaign so far, around 100,200 metric tons of the commodity has been procured from Sindh province, as 15 procurement centres have also been established there to save the farmers from the exploitation of the middleman and providing them the proper price of their produce.
Likewise, around 34,500 metric tons of wheat has been procured from Balochistan where eight centres have been established to procure the commodity, he added.
To ensure smooth and transparent distribution of sacks, the corporation in collaboration with the provincial land revenue departments had conducted field survey and removed the bogus registration of around 2.5 million acres of land. So far, he said, 99.95 percent distribution of bardana (sacks) has been completed, as Passco distributed around 899,579 metric tons (8.995 million) of sacks among the growers across the country.
For the current procurement campaign, the government had set a target to distribute around 900,000 metric tons (nine) million of sacks to facilitate the wheat growers in the country, he added.
In Punjab, around 716,000 metric tons of sacks (7.16 million) have been distributed, whereas small scale growers are on the top priority of the distribution list.
Meanwhile, in Sindh, around 110,000 metric tons of sacks (1.10 million) have been distributed and 34,000 metric tons of bags (0.320 million) have been provided to farmers of Balochistan, he added.
