CHANDIGARH, Oct 14 — Neck deep in paddy crisis, the Punjab Government is also in hot waters on the wheat front. Interestingly, for the trouble pertaining to wheat, again, it is the Union Ministry for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution that is playing the spoilsport.

The problem on the wheat front is two fold. First, negligible shifting of wheat to the deficit states from the stocks held by the Punjab Government procurement agencies and second, the repayment of loans to some banks. Over 101 lakh tonne wheat stock is lying with the agencies. The agencies pay interest on the cash credit, taken from the consortium of banks for procuring wheat.

When asked, the Punjab Finance Secretary, Mr K.R.Lakhanpal, said Punjab owed to the consortium about Rs 8,000 crore as cash credit and interest. The State Government and its procurement agencies were paying about Rs 275 crore per quarter as interest on this amount to the banks concerned through the RBI.

The annual payment of the interest is around Rs 1100 crore. While a sum of Rs 50 crore per quarter is paid by the Punjab Government in lieu of the cash credit taken by the state Food and Supply Department, the remaining is paid by the other procurement agencies like Markfed, Punsup, the Warehousing Corporation and the Punjab Agro Industries Corporation.

Mr Lakhanpal said he had taken up the issue with the RBI as the State Government was unable to pay such a heavy amount of interest. The RBI should find the way out, he added. Earlier, the FCI would take a few months to shift wheat to other states now the exercise takes 15 months.

Though wheat has been procured for the Central pool, but it has not been transferred to the FCI. Only after the transfer of wheat stocks to the Central pool, Punjab would get money, including interest and other incidentals spend by it, from the centre. However, Punjab will continue to suffer on this count till the entire wheat stock was transferred to the Central pool. As per the existing pace of movement of wheat from Punjab to other states, it may take several years to transfer the stock.

The issue was briefly discussed at a high-level meeting convened by the Punjab Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal this morning at his residence. All top officials of the Food and Supplies Department and other procurement agencies were present at the meeting.

It was suggested that the Union Government should be made to take the entire wheat stock lying with the state agencies and pay for it to enable the State Government agencies to clear the cash credit at the earliest.

Punjab Food and Supplies Department officials told TNS that at present even wheat stock purchased in 1997-98 is lying with state procurement agencies. Out of the total wheat stock of 101.53 lakh tonne in the custody of the agencies — Markfed has 31.86 lakh tonne, Punsup 24.74 lakh tonne, Warehouse Corporation 20.48 lakh tonne, the Food and Supplies Department 12.84 lakh tonne and the Punjab Agro 11.82 lakh tonne.