Poor quality wheat brought again

The government yesterday rejected 19,700 tonnes of wheat imported from France for having too many grains with damaged kernels, and asked the supplier to take back the grains worth Tk 40 crore.

Food Directorate Director Ilahi Dad Khan yesterday told The Daily Star that the government decision had been conveyed to the wheat supplier Glencore Grain BV and its local agent Impex Consultants.

Bulk of the government's controversial wheat import (2.05 lakh tonnes) from Brazil earlier this year was also supplied by Glencore through Impex.

Contacted, Impex Consultants proprietor Shahid Jahangir declined to say anything about the government's rejection of the wheat.

Abdul Wadud, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on food ministry, convened a meeting of the JS body on Sunday and said no substandard food grains would get into the country.

“There will be no compromise on quality. We've granaries full of rice and wheat stocks ... There should not be any problem,” said Wadud.

Earlier this year, the government imported 2.05 lakh tonnes of wheat from Brazil and the grain quality and insect infestation in the wheat sparked a huge outcry across the country. Even ruling party men put up barricades at places blocking entry of the consignments to public granaries.

In the last three months, two more wheat consignments (weighing 1.04 lakh tonnes) from France were rejected by the Food Directorate as the ratio of damaged kernels went beyond permissible levels.

Ataur Rahman, joint secretary at the food ministry, said wheat import specifications had been made stringent after the Brazil experience.

Once the government decides to accept any consignment, all ports and customs authorities are notified accordingly, and suppliers would have to take back the rejected grains bearing the transportation expenses, Ataur Rahman explained.

Officials concerned said this year's wheat import has hit a snag due to bitter experience with suppliers providing below-standard grains. As a result, the government could buy only 4 lakh tonnes of wheat so far in 2015 against a planned import volume of 9 lakh tonnes.

Ilahi Dad Khan said his directorate would go for fresh international tenders soon to replenish the public granaries with wheat.

“If need be, we'll blacklist the suppliers who have repeatedly failed to provide us with quality wheat.”

Interestingly, the 19,700 tonnes of wheat that government declined to receive from a ship at Mongla Port yesterday was part of a 52,000 MT shipment anchored first at the Chittagong Port over a month ago.

Sources said after the offloading of 7,000 tonnes of wheat at Chittagong Port, food officials declined to receive the rest, raising questions over the poor grain quality. Samples were then sent to Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (Bari) at Gazipur for quality test, and later 23,000 tonnes more were offloaded in Chittagong.

“In Chittagong, we also found 2,300 tonnes more with too many damaged kernels, and rejected those. Later, as the cargo, carrying the remaining 19,700 tonnes of wheat, wanted to offload at Mongla Port, the lab tests there confirmed the quality did not match the specifications set out in the tender,” said Ilahi Dad Khan.

There is a provision that imported food grains can be offloaded at a 60-40 percent ratio at two seaports in the country.

But as a committee led by Khulna regional controller of food found the wheat volume unacceptable, the government declined to offload that at Mongla.

After the nationwide outcry over the import and distribution of alleged substandard wheat, the food minister in June declared in parliament that they would not import wheat from Brazil anymore.

Since then at least three shipments of the government-imported wheat from France have so far been rejected.

Apart from the import hiccup, domestic procurement also fell short of target. Against a 2.55 lakh tonnes target set for procurement directly from wheat growers, the government could procure 2.05 lakh tonnes.

Bangladesh annually requires more than 40 lakh tonnes of wheat and three-fourths of it is met by public and private sector imports.