Cabinet eases rules for wheat import
Exempts import of 3m tons from purview of PPRA rules in larger national interest
During the July-May period of the just ended fiscal year, Pakistan imported 3.6m metric tons of wheat, costing the cash-starved country $983m, according to PBS. PHOTO: REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:
The federal cabinet has approved to exempt import of three million metric tons wheat that is worth around $725 million at current prices from the purview of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules “in the larger national interest”.
The cabinet gave the approval through circulation of the summary instead of bringing it up as a regular agenda item for a decision. The cabinet had given the exemption on recommendation of the PPRA Board that is headed by Finance Secretary Yousaf Khan.
Over the last few years 50-60pc of ginning units have closed down as cotton production declined. Reuters/File
ISLAMABAD: The government has called a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) on Monday (today) to consider allowing an intervention price of about Rs5,000 per 40kg for cotton, which has arguably been necessitated by a sharp decline in production, besides clearing a dozen supplementary grants so close to the passage of federal budget by parliament.
To be presided over by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, the ECC meeting is expected to approve a notification about minimum indicative prices of tobacco and revision of cess rates on the commodity for the year 2021-22.
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The writer is a former civil servant.
IT was sobering to learn that Pakistan had imported $6.12 billion worth of foodstuff in the first nine months of the current financial year, up 54 per cent from last year. This includes (in rounded figures) $1bn of wheat, $2bn of palm oil, $0.5bn each of pulses, tea and milk products and $127 million of sugar.
If you extrapolate that for the last quarter of the year and add $2bn of cotton (we already imported $1.5bn in nine months), we reach a conservative figure of $9.5bn imports of agricultural products. This is appalling. Despite the trillion-rupee concession to our export industry, we will hardly reach an export figure of $24bn. For a country where 70pc of the population is engaged in agriculture is it not shameful we spend almost 40pc of what we earn in importing agricultural produce, supposedly our area of strength?