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LAHORE:
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Kisan Wing General Secretary Ejaz Shafi has called for the establishment of a national wheat council, alleging that conflicting government estimates and inadequate planning could trigger a crisis. Shafi questioned the government’s wheat production figures for 2026, alleging discrepancies between estimates produced by different agencies.
He stated that the federal government had estimated wheat production in the ongoing year at 29.8 million tonnes compared with 28.4 million tonnes in 2025, while also maintaining that the reserves had exceeded two million tonnes. Despite these figures, he said, provincial requirements had subsequently reached 2.2 million tonnes, prompting the government to decide to import one million tonnes of the commodity.
Shafi said the developments had exposed shortcomings in the wheat estimation and planning, arguing that import decisions should be based on reliable and verifiable production data.
He pointed to a difference between estimates by the Crop Reporting Services (CRS) and the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO). According to him, the CRS had estimated the production at 29.8 million tonnes from 9.48 million hectares, while SUPARCO’s satellite-based assessment put the figure at 27.48 million tonnes from 8.84 million hectares.
