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Government held 8.06 million wheat in its stocks at the beginning of the current marketing year, sharply lower than 14.54 million tonne last year. Govt stocks are lower this year due to poor output in the last two years, and high sales through the govt open market auctions to manage supply in wholesale markets. Stocks are likely to be replenished that the government has already started wheat procurement for the current marketing year and aims to purchase 33 million tonne against 22.9 million tonne bought last year. Govt has procured 3.9 million tonne wheat from farmers across the country, up 7.4% from a year ago.

Wholesale prices of wheat were unchanged in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, primarily due to the govt procurement of the grain from farmers to check a fall in prices and build up stocks. Government is procuring wheat from farmers in the state at a MSP and has procured 2.1 million tonne of wheat in the state. Around 30,000 bags (1bag=100kg) of wheat arrived in the market almost unchanged from the previous day. Around 20,000 bags of wheat arrived in Delhi, mainly from Uttar Pradesh, higher than 15,000 bags.

More than 37.15 lakh tonne wheat has arrived so far in the mandis of Haryana. Of the total arrival, the 5 government procuring agencies have purchased 37.12 lakh tonne and traders have purchased 3,000 tonnes of wheat at MSP. More than 9.36 lakh tonne wheat has been procured by Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department, where as Haryana State Co-operative Supply and Marketing Federation Ltd (HAFED) has purchased more than 12.54 lakh tonne wheat. FCI has purchased more than 4.25 LT wheat, Haryana Agro Industries Corporation have purchased more than 3.09 LT and more than 7.85 LT wheat has been procured by Haryana Warehousing Corporation. District Kaithal leading in wheat arrival where more than 4.71 lakh tonne of the crop had been procured followed by district Karnal, which recorded more than 4.61 lakh tonne.

Iraq Trade Ministry negotiating direct contracts for the import of rice and wheat after multiple failures to secure them through international tenders. Iraq has been struggling to import the grains for its food subsidy programmed after introducing new payment and quality terms that kept traders away from its international tenders. The Central Committee, after a failure of several tenders because of the new mechanisms for contracts, has begun to negotiate with large international companies to contract wheat.

U.S. wheat planted area peaked in 2008-09 at 63.2 million acres and U.S. wheat planted area has fallen 27 percent to a projected 46.1 million acres in 2017-18. It will be 16% below the 5-year average of 55.0 million acres. The increased winter wheat planted area by 360,000 acres from January 2017 estimate to 32.7 million acres. The new estimate is still 9% down from 2016-17 planted area. The increase came from hard red winter area, estimated at 23.8 million acres up 2% from the previous projection. Still, HRW planted area will be down 10 percent from 26.5 million acres (10.7 million hectares) planted for 2016-17. hard Red Winter planted area will be down 10% from 26.5 million acres planted for 2016-17. Soft red winter planted area decreased from the previous estimate to 5.53 million acres. USDA expects white wheat acres planted in both winter and spring to reach 4.12 million acres for 2017-18, down slightly from 2016-17.

US wheat planted area falls to record low.

Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) has expressed concerns over delay in return of rebate on wheat export and demanded of the federal governments to ensure release of the rebate without any further delay sand save businessmen from bankruptcy. The demand was made in a meeting the association held 9th April with its provincial president Haji Mohammad Yousuf Khan Afridi in the chair. The participants of the meeting said, government was delaying imbursement of rebate on wheat flour exported to Afghanistan that caused huge financial losses to the business community. The subsidy amounting to billions of rupees was given on export of approx. 1.8 million tonnes wheat to Afghanistan every year and demanded of the government to bring more transparency in the rebate process. Authorities should impose ban on sale of existing old stock of wheat, stored at government stores, to ensure availability of good quality of flour in the local market.