ISLAMABAD: Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet(ECC) here on Wednesday decided to extend financial guarantees of the Provinces and Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) to maintain and stabilize reserve of wheat upto 6.5 million metric tons. The ECC met here under the chairmanship of Federal Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh.The summary for the procurement of wheat by the public sector was moved by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and ECC considered it at length in light of the recommendations of the review meeting for the purchase of the wheat policy headed by the Deputy Chairman Planning commission.
That meeting (held on February 3) had recommended that the wheat procurement target will be 6.57 million tons, PASSCO 1.30 metric tons, Punjab 3.5 metric tons, Sindh 1.3 tons, Khyber Paktunkhwa 0.4 metric tons and Balochistan .07 metric tons.The Committee was also apprised of the sugar stock situation. The Committee was informed that sugar stock is sufficient for the coming October 2011.The Ministry of Industries and production in its summary gave a detailed outline of the local sugar production. Up till March 15 the production remained 33,33,950 metric tons whereas the already stocked position is 16,846 metric tons.The Trading Corporation of Pakistan has the stock of 4,45,984 metric tons which make the total stock position as 25,74,610 metric tons – APP
