At a meeting of the Co-ordination Committee on Food, Nutrition and Early Recovery of Agriculture Sector, the government decided to release 530,000 million tonnes wheat for immediate requirements that includes 80,000 million tonnes for AJK and 30,000 million tonnes for World Food Programme for urgent distribution.
This includes earlier allocation of 300,000 million tonnes to NWFP and 120,000 million tonnes to the AJK Government. Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) Secretary Muhammad Ismail Qureshi chaired the meeting.
Representatives of Food and Agriculture Organisation, Asian Development Bank, World Food Programme, World Bank, International Fund for Agricultural Development, US Aid, Economic Affairs Division, Relief Commissioner and Agriculture Secretaries of AJK and NWFP governments attended the meeting.
FAO, ADB and WFP presented needs, assessment and requirements for short-, medium- and long-term programmes amounting $558 million, including immediate requirements of $167 million.
It included $113 million for food and nutrition, $54.2 million for agricultural (wheat and vegetable) and livestock early recovery with the following key areas of intervention during November 2005.
The FAO had already initiated procurement of agricultural inputs under Technical Co-operation Programme of Rs 30 million, which would be supplemented by other donors and federal and provincial governments.
The World Food Programme informed that 2.3 million people were food insecure. The assessed requirement would be 212,000 million tonnes food, including 160,000 million tonnes of wheat plus oil, sugar, rice and dates, etc.
World Bank, Asian Development Bank and IFAD have also agreed to reallocate and provide more than $100 million directly from their ongoing programme to the AJK and NWFP governments for early recovery, including agriculture.
The governments of AJK and NWFP would implement this in co-ordination with the Minfal.