The Ministry of Finance issued a handout after the emergency ECC session, which explained the import mechanism without officially disclosing the import quantity. The federal government linked the wheat import with opening of letter of credits to avoid the repetition of import of sugar where the provinces did not make payments after committing, said the federal officials. Another senior government functionary told The Express Tribune that the ECC decided to import 500,000 to one million metric tonnes of wheat as per final decision of provinces. The maximum one million metric tonnes of wheat approval is equal to 45% of the total 2.2 million metric tonnes demands that the four provinces made in the wheat board meeting on Monday to deal with the wheat and wheat flour supply and prices crisis. The steering committee would be chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar and all the other decisions would be taken by the steering committee.