KARACHI - On the directive of the federal government, Sindh government has increased wheat procurement target from 1.2 million tons to 1.5 million tons during the current season, officials told The Nation on Tuesday. Due to availability of sufficient wheat in the province, Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MinFAL) has issued instructions to provincial Food Department to increase its procurement target of the commodity. Meanwhile, enhancing the wheat procurement target, the provincial Food Department has also issued directives to district food department officials for gearing up their efforts to achieve the additional task. A senior official of Food Department confirmed the wheat procurement target has been enhanced to 1.5 million tons from 1.2 million tons for the current season FY2008-09. He informed that, so far, Sindh Food Department has procured 0.979 million tons of wheat against the mere 0.278 million tons of the commodity procured during the same period last year. Though the wheat procurement data of 28th April (Tuesday) was not available, according to the concerned official, the overall procurement of the commodity has reached one million tons all over the province. On the basis of ongoing wheat procurement drive, the food department would easily achieve the target of buying the remaining quantity of this staple food item, official said. It may be noted here that government had already doubled wheat procurement target to 1.2 million tons this year against merely 0.6 million tons target in the FY2007-8, while federal government has further increased it to 1.5 million tons. The analysts and agriculture experts have doubted that the set procurement target would be met. The said there were complaints in Sindh that provincial food department was paying less amount of wheat than official support price of Rs950/40kg to growers. Furthermore, the concerned provincial minister had already admitted that Sindh Food Department was facing shortage of gunny bags and had only around one million gunny bags in hand to be provided to growers. Sources said the Sindh Food Department has issued directives to enhance the procurement target of wheat without making proper financial arrangements. They said the money for enhanced wheat procurement has not reached yet in the banks located in remote towns of the interior Sindh and it would not be possible for them to procure commodity from growers on deferred payment.