Pakistan has sold around 750,000 tons of wheat for export

Pakistan has sold around 750,000 tons of wheat ready for export with a price range of around $188 to $200 a ton, free-on-board, grain exporter Seatrade group said on Saturday.

“Some of the wheat is being sold as milling wheat and other as feed ... Some is going by road to Afghanistan,” Tayub Rafiq Balagamwala, director of corporate affairs, told an industry event in Dubai.

Pakistan has been hardly visible in wheat export markets in past years with its main sales going to Afghanistan.

A bumper crop last year and large stocks led the Pakistani government to introduce a new export subsidy scheme in January which has led to a series of large export sales in the past month.

A Pakistani cabinet committee in December approved a program to export 2 million tons of wheat in the current financial year, with 1.5 million tons coming from the state of Punjab and 500,000 tons from the state of Sindh.

Balagamwala expected most of the quantity dedicated for export to be sold in a few months.

Around 300,000 tons of the total sold quantity has gone to Afghanistan, he said.

Of Pakistan’s total exportable sugar, Balagamwala said around 650,000 tons have been traded.

A sizable quantity has gone to Taiwan and Myanmar, he said.

“Sugar is going to a lot of places but especially to Taiwan and Yangon where it is then smuggled into China,” he said.

Because of a licensing problem in Myanmar, the sugar has been flowing more into Taiwan and then into China but he expected that issue to be tackled soon and then for exports to flow more there where it is simpler to go on into China.

He expected the 1.5 million tons of exports all to be sold by June.