By Asad Cheema
ISLAMABAD: The Senate Commerce Committee 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 Senate Standing Committee on Commerce met on Thursday under the Chairmanship of Zeeshan Khanzada here at the Parliament House and received a detail briefing on the working of Trading Cooperation of Pakistan (TCP) with focus on its role in post flood scenario.
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 committee was also apprised that the private sector import on commodities imported by the TCP is not banned however due to exemption of taxes and heavy government subsidy; do not make it feasible for the private sector to import the same.
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.
Senator Zeeshan Khanzada 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.
