Home Latest News Shehbaz Sharif Urges Punjab, KP to Stop Politicizing Wheat Shortage

Shehbaz Sharif Urges Punjab, KP to Stop Politicizing Wheat Shortage

Pakistan’s prime minister rules out permission for private sector to import commodity, citing prevailing economic crunch

by Staff Report

P.M. Shehbaz Sharif chairs a meeting of the National Flood Response and Coordination Center on Oct. 20, 2022. Photo courtesy PID

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday urged the provincial governments of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa—both led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf—to rise above politics and join the center’s program to provide wheat seeds to farmers of flood-hit areas.

Chairing a meeting of the National Flood Response and Coordination Center in Islamabad, he said the seed scheme called for 50 percent funding contribution from the provincial and federal governments to ensure wheat seeds for affected farmers. Both Sindh and Balochistan, he said, had already agreed to this. However, he regretted, the Punjab and KP governments were refusing to cooperate and were politicizing the matter.

“I request you to accept the offer in view of the plight of flood-hit farmers,” he said. “And if you still reject it, then don’t twist facts that the center is not extending assistance,” he said, emphasizing that as a federation, Pakistan encompassed all its provincial units, and national unity was needed to tackle the current crisis.

Warning that the production of wheat would likely be hampered next year due to the floods, he flat-out rejected the Punjab government’s demand to allow imports of the commodity through the private sector, citing the heavy foreign exchange cost it would entail. “In view of [economic] emergency situation, I will not allow the private sector to import wheat,” he said, adding that the government was aiming to get a better price for wheat from foreign states.

Discussing the flood relief and rehabilitation work already done, he said Rs. 880 million in compensation and relief goods—food, water, medicine, mosquito nets—had been disbursed to flood-affected families by the center through the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). Relief supplies from friendly countries are also being distributed through a very transparent channel of the NDMA, he added.

The prime minister said neighboring China was sending “winter tents” of good quality to help flood-hit people cope with the inclement weather. He also clarified that even as waters had started to recede in some areas, large parts of the country remained inundated, which was posing significant risks for the spread of water-borne diseases.

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