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PASSCO to acquire 100-120 rice mills on lease

By Nauman Tasleem

LAHORE: Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) will acquire 100 to 120 rice mills on lease in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan to meet the paddy procurement target of one million tonnes. PASSCO intervenes as a second player in the market to safeguard the interests of the growers who are exploited by the middle-men if there is no intervention by the corporation. It also helps in consolidating the market by guaranteeing a handsome price for the growers. It also keeps buffer stocks for times of any natural calamity or disaster.

"We have expressions of interests from around 94 mills in the Punjab province to work in collaboration with the PASSCO to buy paddy while applications from mills in Sindh and Balochistan have again been invited with lowering the earnest money to Rs 200,000," said Managing Director PASSCO Major Gen Anwar Saeed Khan while addressing a press conference here on Thursday.

He dispelled the impression that millers were not interested to lease out their facilities to the corporation for paddy procurement. He said that 100 to 120 mills would be acquired in first phase and this number could increase if needed. He said that that the functioning of the mills, storage of rice, processing, husking and security of the stock would be responsibility of the mill while PASSCO would buy the paddy from growers and pay the mills husking, labour and other charges. He said that the intervention prices fixed by the government were Rs 1250 per maund for Super Basmati, Rs 1000 for Basmati-385 and Rs 600 per maund for IRRI-06."On acceptance of paddy after quality and moisture check, growers would be paid fifty percent of its payment immediately and the rest would be paid by January 15, 2009," Major Gen. Anwar Saeed informed.

He said that they were yet to finalise the loan deal for banks but made it clear that it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide funds for procurement drive as the corporation did not have its own resources and always takes loan from commercial banks for any procurement.

Managing Director PASSCO said that they had formally launched procurement in Punjab from November 02 while in Sindh millers and exporters of rice had assured the government that they would pay Rs 600 per maund to growers of IRRI-6. He claimed that chances of IRRI-6 were very bright for export as its world production has declined. Even India, which is a grower of IRRI-6, has floated a tender to import this variety of rice. Keeping in view this situation private sector was already paying good price to IRRI growers, he said. He advised the growers that moisture content of around 16 to 20 percent would be subject to deduction in procurement price. However, paddy having more than 20 percent moisture rate would not be bought at any cost, he made clear.

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