LAHORE, May 12: The Punjab food department faces a slowdown in its wheat procurement drive with the price going above Rs300 per 40kg in the open market.

At present, the average price in the province has gone up to Rs301 per 40kg, which is more than the food department is entitled to offer, says an official of the department. At some places, it is even hovering around Rs310.

For this reason, the procurement drive has slowed down. The daily purchase has come down from 121,000 tons on May 5 to 75,000 tons on May 11. It was largely because of massive private buying in the market, the official said. The fear is that private buyers may take the crop away and create a food crisis in the province.

According to another official, the food department for the first time is fearing that it might miss the essential target of 2.7 million tons needed to ensure food security in the province. “The situation has been conveyed to the chief minister who has called a meeting on Tuesday (today). The CM is in the capital and has called everyone there because of the importance of the matter,” he said.

The food department had procured 1.79 million tons of wheat by Monday, but the pace slowed down alarmingly. It would take some extra effort on its part to meet the food security target of 2.7 million tons. Though the department started the procurement drive with 200,000 tons in its kitty but it still needed 2.5 million tons. The target looked achievable but it might need some extra administrative effort nonetheless, the official said.

The department cannot recommend an inter-district or inter-provincial ban on the transport of wheat because of the declared government policy, but it can still request for some administrative powers to control the middleman who is a licensee of the government and is instrumental in selling wheat to private buyers.

Farmers’ bodies have other reasons to cite for the procurement problems. The crop size is not as optimistic as has been argued by the government, they claim. It would not go beyond the last year’s 14.6 million tons. There were lot of problems like rain causing inundation of fields in central Punjab and damaging the crop and delaying the start of sugarcane-sowing season. These factors have hurt the crop and are sure to affect the final yield, they insist.

The current slowdown, they claim, is more because of a limited crop size rather than massive buying in the private sector. The private sector being closer to reality knew the real crop size and went into a buying spree on time. On the other hand, the food department was relying on official estimates and was now in a ditch that it had dug for itself, they claimed. However, Jehangir Khan Tareen, adviser to the chief minister on agriculture, is still sticking to the official estimates, insisting that the yield would not be less than 15.6 million tons — one million tons more than last year. “The problem is that every one expected a bumper crop and had his own interpretation of what bumper meant,” he claimed. This subjective view of the crop size created problems. Otherwise, the crop size is not as bad as some people want us to believe. The government initially expected it to be above 16 million tons, but even now it is hoping for 15.6 million tons, which is not bad.

He claimed that the procurement drive had just started in central Punjab — Faisalabad and Sargodha — and it would hardly be a problem for the government to procure another 0.8 million tons and achieve food security. It is satisfying that the price has not crashed and procurement is going well, he added.

Mr Tareen insisted that millers would not buy more than two million tons from the food department, because they had already procured extra wheat for themselves.