Pakistan sells 4,000 tonne wheat to India
12 Apr 2007
Mumbai:
Traders in Pakistan have sold up to 4,000 tonnes
of wheat to India, the first such sale in years, industry
officials said.
The port of discharge for the wheat shipment would be
Mumbai and the delivery is due May or June. The export
price is fixed at $219 to $222 per tonne, traders said,
adding that exporters were getting orders from India
and the Middle East because of the superior quality
of Pakistani wheat.
Pakistan has already allowed the sale of 800,000 tonnes
by private traders and removed a 15-per cent duty on
exports. The wheat sale is the first since the government
stopped wheat exports in May 2003 following a domestic
supply shortfall.
The government has set a deadline of June to ship the
800,000 tonnes for private traders. So far, deals for
up to 200,000 tonnes have been finalised, they pointed
out.
The state-run Trading Corporation of Pakistan, meanwhile,
is seeking government approval to restart wheat exports,
but traders do not expect the TCP to get involved.
Pakistan''s government lifted a two-and-a-half-year ban
on all wheat exports in January on expectations of a
bumper harvest of 23 million tonnes this year.
Traders said the government was holding more than 2
million tonnes of wheat stocks in excess of buffer norms
and more arrivals had created a storage problem.
They
said the exportable total would increase as the government
planned to export supplies over and above the domestic
requirement of 20.5 million tonnes.
