There has been significant controversy and public outcry over the continued import of wheat in May 2024, despite the government’s target to halt imports in February 2024. This decision comes at a time when the country’s own wheat crop has flooded the market. The middlemen, flour mills, and hoarders are more inclined to store and hoard imported wheat compared to domestic wheat due to the price difference.

The average landed price of imported wheat is around US$290/mt (AU$450/mt), significantly lower than the government’s domestic intervention price of approximately US$350/mt (AU$545/mt). As a result, the burden of purchasing and storing wheat has fallen on the government, which lacks the financial resources and capacity for adequate maintenance and management of warehouses. Moreover, with the government’s warehouses already full of wheat and farmers expecting to sell no more than 50 percent of their crop, losses are estimated to be nearly 380 billion rupees ($1.4 billion).

Various reasons and theories have been proposed to explain this glut, but no one has been able to provide credible data to support these claims. This lack of transparency may be due to either naivety or an attempt to conceal certain facts.

According to credible data from the United States Department of Agriculture, there was no wheat import from 2015 to 2019. However, there was a staggering 361,600 percent increase in 2020. This increase coincided with the weakening of the USA’s hold on Afghanistan and the rise to power of the Taliban. During this time, some ambitious elements began to consider Afghanistan as part of Pakistan’s sphere of influence, leading........

© Daily Times