Wheat growers confused over compensations and new directives

The Council of Ministers’ General Secretariat issued new directives last week to refrain from collecting the present year’s wheat harvest and to replace the yearly government procurement price which was fixed at around LBP590 per kg for five years with a lump sum compensation of LBP175 thousand for each dunum,. According to this new policy crop farmers are expected to market their stocked production on their own. As for next year, he General Directorate of Cereals and Sugar Beets at the Ministry of Economy, reportedly announced that it will start receiving submissions from farmers who wish to benefit from the state’s subsidy program for growing wheat and barley as of December 16, 2015 and until February 6, 2016. Meanwhile, wheat farmers are still awaiting the implementation of Finance Minister’s recent approval authorizing the Ministry of Economy to pay their entitlements for the current years and which total value is estimated at LBP23 billion and 800 million. In this respect, a number of farmers said they wished that the government took delivery of their crop harvest rather then pay a meager compensation while expecting them to market the entire harvest. They pointed out that huge stockpiles of wheat remain in warehouses in what seems to be a heated struggle with mill owners over prices amidst a global decline to a benchmark of USD210 per one ton. Owners of mills are refusing to buy hard wheat even at low price levels such as LBP330 per one kg. (An Nahar, November 27, 2015)