No imports outside of mandate of TCP should be made: Senate body.

ISLAMABAD -- Senate Standing Committee on Commerce on Thursday called for assurance from the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) (Pvt.) Limited, that no imports outside of the mandate of the TCP should be made. The committee also recommended introducing the bifurcation of procurement plan into regular and emergent so that the items could be procured by minimal rates. The chairman TCP apprised the committee that the TCP makes procurement for the food security and industries for urea and mainly deals with the import of wheat, sugar and urea to respond emergencies. The TCP presented proposals for permanent exemption on limitations on splitting tenders, 30 days response time, 15 days hoisting time before approval for inviting objections, matching bids, limitation on negotiations and 15 pc repeat per cap. The TCP also proposed to introduce lemmatizing the quantity of procurement and time indictors according to harvesting season. The Senate Standing Committee on Commerce met on Thursday under the chairmanship of Zeeshan khanzada here at the Parliament House and received a detailed briefing on the working of Trading Cooperation of Pakistan (TCP) with focus on its role in post flood scenario.

The chairman TCP briefed the committee that the TCP is fully owned by the government of Pakistan, financially independent i.e. it does not receive any budgetary grant from federal government and the federal government determines when the TCP should import. The TCP informed the committee that the TCP invests 80pc with government securities (T-Bills, Treasury Bills, and PIBs) whereas 20pc funds are invested in term deposit and daily products. The chairman Committee inquired on the role of NFML to which the TCP replied that the National Fertilizer Marketing Limited (NFMl) is a distributive network and do not deal in...