ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Supply Corporation (PASSCO) is working on a plan to end the role of middle-man to purchase wheat in bulk rather than bardana.According to sources the move will go a long way to help reduce the rising trend of corruption in wheat procurement process and will help to discourage the role of middle-man in wheat purchase operation. It has also plan to register farmers and issue PASSCO cards during wheat sale operation and under the proposed plan wheat can only be procured in bulk without bardana in order to curtail the role of middle-man.It proposed by PASSCO to minimize the subsidy burden on the government of Pakistan and also to minimize the carrying cost wheat procurement targets allocated to PASSCO should be need driven and wheat procurement target to be given keeping in view the average requirement of dependent provinces .Armed forces plus strategic and any unforeseen factors."A payment mechanism be developed wherein the cost of wheat dispatched to Gilgit-Baltistan and Government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) are directly paid at source in advance to PASSCO by the Federal government which, will save the national exchequer heavy mark-up which keeps accumulating due to present payment mechanism," sources said."PASSCO requires minimum storage capacity of 1.5 million tons because its godowns has the capacity of only 0.431 million (28 per cent) tons and the remaining 72 per cent wheat stocks were stored in open under tarpaulins," official date reveals." the situation is precarious at 2.039 million tons wheat stocks are lying in the open in far-flung areas (as on 24.09.2012) which has more susceptible to climatic hazards and pest attack,".It said there was a dire need to create additional storage facilities for PASSC and in this regard proposal and offer of Islamic Development Bank for construction of silos with capacity of .65 million tons need to be persuade at war footing on government level.It is quite relevant to mention here that PASSCO has to pay Rs12 billion mark-up on Rs93.54 billion of loans taken from commercial banks in current financial year 2011-12 to run its operations whereas it has to recover Rs19.7 billion dues from regional and provincial governments and other organisations, including the Pakistan Army, on account of wheat supply. In addition to these, PASSCO was to receive Rs3.8 billion on account of mark-up and financial charges from different agencies.