Zubair Yaqoob
Karachi
Rafique Suleman, Convener, FPCCI Standing Committee on Rice called 3rd meeting of his Committee Today at Federation House, Karachi. This meeting was attended by Muhammad Raza, Senior Vice Chairman REAP, Shiraz Shaikh REAP’s Managing Committee Member, Faisal Anis, Kazim Khandwala, Sufiyan Rahim, Shoaib Rauf, Noman Arif, Jatender Kumar and other leading rice exporters.
During the matter various matters related to rice export trade have been discussed. Rafique Suleman thanked all participants for attending this meeting. He expressed his gratitude to Advisor to Prime Minister on Commerce and Team at MINCOM for their efforts for re-opening of Qatar market for Pakistani rice exporters after long time. As a result, first tender of Qatar was issued for 4,000 M/Ton rice and successfully awarded to a Pakistan origin company.
However, it was very surprising that 2nd tender of Qatar CTC for 48,000 M/Ton was only for India origin. He requested Government of Pakistan to take up this matter with relevant Qatari Authorities and arrange to add Pakistan origin in this tender and all future tenders. Further he suggested that if the rice variety belongs to both India and Pakistan then the tender should not be origin specific, so that fair level playing field will be available for all.
He informed the House about the new revolutionary rice seed namely, Green Super Rice (GSR) which is very low cost and needs less quantity of water and other input and its yield is better than other rice seeds.
He added that after the consistent efforts GSR seed was distributed to farmers for sowing in this season and recently a delegation of REAP’s Senior Members along with Dr. Muhammad Arif, Senior Scientist from NIBGE Faisalabad, Nadeem Shah, Vice President Sindh Abadgar Board, Director General, National Institute of Agriculture, Tando Jam and Other officials visited various rice fields in Sindh Province and it is very good to see the encouraging results and we will be having good quality of rice this year.
