UNISAME urged to upgrade maize thrashing units

KARACHI - The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) has urged the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) to upgrade the maize thrashing units on top priority basis to promote the maize growing, thrashing, flour milling for local consumption and exports as it is grown abundantly twice in a year.
President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver in a message to Shahid Rashid Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has pointed out that this year we have a bumper maize crop and maize has been pouring in the markets since May and excellent harvest has been reported in Okara, Pak Pattan, Sahiwal and other parts of Punjab and some areas of Sindh. Almost forty to fifty thousand bags are arriving every day in each market and are offered at around Rs 17 per kg.
He said out of the total crop about 55 has been consumed due to shortage of wheat as maize flour is a substitute for wheat flour and in some houses they are mixing about 20 to 25 to economise besides it is very nourishing and has oil, proteins, fibre, and glucose.
He said the government has banned the wheat flour mills from mixing maize with flour and urged the government to allow mixing of up to 20 as this would in fact help in overcoming the wheat shortage.
He said SMEDA should study the maize thrashing business and modernise it to increase productivity and also conduct a potentiality study as the maize corn is used in the making of flour, oil, medicine and glucose and there is increasing demand from within the country and now due to international food crisis there is constant overseas demand as well.
Unisame experts have called upon SMEDA to focus on agro based industries many of which are in primitive stage .The units are relying on orthodox systems of growing, processing, storing and lack marketing techniques and have poor logistics and with help from SMEDA they can be modernised.