KARACHI, Feb 26: Growers criticised the government on Tuesday for announcing support or procurement price for wheat ‘too late’ and ‘too little’ saying it would have no impact on the size of the crop as harvesting season in the lower Sindh is only weeks away.

The government on Monday fixed Rs510 per 40 kg as procurement price for wheat, which is 20 per cent higher than last year’s price of Rs425 per 40 kg. However, the growers have rejected the official procurement price and feel it was much below than their expectation and does not even cover their input cost.

They further say that announcing the procurement price close to the harvesting season forms no logic because it would not benefit growers, who are normally attracted by higher procurement price and bring more land under wheat cultivation to get the higher return.

In the past, the government used to announce the wheat support price in August or September, which was much before the sowing season in October and this worked as an incentive for growers to bring more land under wheat cultivation.

The rising prices of inputs have made wheat crop highly costly for growers, who complain that the price of DAP fertiliser mostly used for this crop has doubled in a year from Rs1,000 per 40 kg bag to Rs2,100. The Sindh growers are more apprehensive about this season and feel that they would also be confronting water shortages.

Talking to Dawn, a grower from Hyderabad said that delay in the announcement of the support price had already harmed the national interests depriving the country not having more area under wheat crop.

Ghulam Nabi Morai, President of Sindh Farmers Association (SFA), said that the wheat growers waited in vain for the support price throughout the entire sowing season to take a right decision towards usage of land.

However, he said that the Monday announcement was of no use, particularly when there were strong indications that lesser land was brought under wheat cultivation this season.

He expressed his dismay over policymakers’ decision and said when they were ready to pay higher price to the wheat growers of other countries by importing costly wheat, why they were not ready to give better price to their own growers and get larger size crop to meet country’s consumption needs, which now stands around 20.8 to 21.4 million tons.

Last season, wheat was exported at $200 per ton but very soon it was realized by the officials that country was facing acute shortage of wheat and allowed import, which were made at $511 per ton.

In all 0.4 million tons of wheat was exported whereas around one million tons have been imported so far causing a national loss of around Rs20 billion.

Mr Morai apprehended that the country would be facing another year of wheat crisis as the current crop would not be sufficient to meet the domestic demand and larger quantities will have to be imported by using huge foreign exchange.

Even today, he said, there is no wheat in the country as the government estimates of last crop were totally wrong, which also resulted in wheat flour crisis.

Unfortunately, he said, countries like Saudi Arabia has become exporters of wheat and Pakistan resorted to import wheat from this country up to 0.5 million tons in 2005. He also challenged production estimates of 23.5m tons given by government.