LAHORE, Aug 22: The country may be heading towards a wheat crisis as Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP are likely to face a shortage of the staple commodity by the beginning of the next year.

According to sources in the Punjab food department, the stocks of the three provinces may exhaust by February, 2004. Punjab, however, will be safe with its stocks of over 2.5 million tons.

Calculations show that Sindh will either be teetering on the brink of the food security or facing a deficit of around 100,000 tons.

At the beginning of the season, Sindh claimed to have a carry-over of 289,000 tons. But the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) has doubts about this claim and believes that Sindh has only half of what it claims.

In addition, Sindh purchased 319,000 tons of wheat during the last procurement drive, thus taking its stocks to 608,000 tons, a quantity it consumed last year. The federal ministry feels that even if Sindh’s claim about the carry-over is true, it is teetering on the border line. But if the claim is incorrect, then the province will be in for a serious trouble by the end of this year.

Balochistan had only 43,000 tons from last year’s stocks but it did not procure any wheat this season. It consumed around 208,000 tons last year. By that yardstick, it faces a deficit of 165,000 tons this year.

The situation in the NWFP is not any better. The province had a carry-over of 101,000 tons and procured only 70,000 tons, totalling 171,000 tons. But it consumed about 236,000 tons of wheat last year, thus facing a net deficit of about 65,000 tons this year.

According to the Minfal, the total procurement of Passco and food departments stood at 3.507 million tons by June 13. By the same date in 2002, the total procurement was 3.959 million tons. Out of the total, 0.228 million tons have to be exported in accordance with a contract. Private stockists and millers have another one million tons, totalling the stocks to 4.5 million tons.

The total requirement of the country, according to the Kissan Board of Pakistan, is over five million tons. KBP secretary-general Ibrahim Mughal claims that the country may face a deficit of 0.5 to 1 million tons by February.

He said the import mafia was getting stronger as it had already taken India off the negative list for wheat imports. He said though there was no decision about the import of wheat from India, it might be coming soon and added that the US could also be enlisted for the purpose.

The custodian of strategic reserves, the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Supplies Corporation, has only 0.58 million tons and it has to support Azad Jammu and Kashmir with around 200,000 tons, the Northern Areas with another 70,000 tons and defence with 180,000 tons. Thus, it may not be of much help to provinces in the crunch period.