New Delhi, March 14: The government today extended the deadline for import of duty-free wheat to April-end.

In a public notice, the directorate general of foreign trade said zero-duty wheat imports should arrive before April 30. The earlier deadline for duty-free import was February-end.

Officials said the deadline was extended partly to keep the pressure on private commodity traders to keep prices low and partly because a wheat contract entered into by state-run STC to bring in 5.5 million tonnes of grain could only come in April.

“Most of the wheat shipments have already arrived at the ports. We had asked the government to extend the time by a month as one shipment is yet to come, an STC official said.

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar yesterday said a decision on whether to raise the procurement price of wheat would be taken by the cabinet soon.

Sources said a GoM on the issue had considered paying a bonus to wheat farmers to ensure that a larger portion of the crop could be picked up by state-run food agencies such as the FCI instead of private traders.

The private players are being blamed in part for the huge increases in wheat prices over the past one year.

Government stocks fell last year as private traders bought large amounts of wheat from farmers at higher rates than those offered by the state. Officials also said the government might reduce duty on palm oil imports to try and reduce the price of cooking oil in India.