No wheat, flour shortage in country, says Food Security ministry

ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Food Security has denied wheat or flour shortage crisis in the country in a hearing of the Senate’s standing committee for food security, ARY News reported on Tuesday.

Senator Muzaffar Hussain Shah chaired the food security committee’s meeting which discussed recent wheat and flour crisis in the country.

The decision to import 300,000 tons of wheat has been taken as precaution, an official of the federal ministry of food security informed the committee’s session here.

The country have overall stocks of 900,000 tons of wheat and 6.34 Lac tons from the wheat stock has been allocated to the provinces, food security ministry’s officials said. “Still 388,000 tons surplus stock of wheat would be available at the end of the year,” officials said.

The wheat crop in Pakistan suffered losses due to above normal rainfall in the country. “The wheat production was dropped by around 1.2 million tons below the target, ministry officials told the committee.

The food ministry’s officials informed the meeting that the export of wheat from the country was banned under an order on July 24, 2019.

According to the food ministry officials Punjab procured four million tons of wheat in June last year, while the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh didn’t purchase the wheat crop.