February 27, 2003	Thursday	Zul Hijjah 25, 1423

PESHAWAR, Feb 26: NWFP is likely to exceed Rs1bn wheat subsidy projection for the current fiscal. The amount was fixed by the last provincial government, according to official sources.

Provincial minister for food Fazal Rabbani told Dawn that the NWFP government was incurring around Rs4m every day since Nov 29 last, by providing wheat from its godowns at subsidised rates.

Provision of wheat on subsidized rates, according to official sources, is aimed at extending relief to atta consumers by providing wheat from the official godowns at a price lower than the cost at which the provincial government had procured the commodity from external sources including Passco and Punjab.

The NWFP government’s increasing chances of spending more than the funds initially earmarked under the subsidy head for the 2002-03 financial year have been attributed to the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal led NWFP government’s move to increase the quantum of wheat released from the official godowns to flour mills every day.

Since Nov 29 last, said the sources, between 1400 tons and 1500 tons wheat was being released to flour mills every day from the 18 official godowns of the food department, NWFP, situated across the province.

The food minister said that move to double the daily releases was meant to avoid wheat flour shortage in the province.

Before Nov 29 last, flour mills were being provided between 600 tons and 700 tons wheat from official godowns every day.

The decision to provide greater quantity of wheat from official godowns, said the official sources, had helped some 27 flour mills to become operational again after remaining closed for a long time.

According to the minister, before the MMA took government in the NWFP, some 71 flour mills were operational out of a total of 243 mills the province has — all in the private sector.

He claimed that due to greater releases of wheat from the official godowns to the millers the number of operational flour mills in the province had risen to 98.

Rejecting the impression given by the NWFP flour mills association regarding scarcity of wheat stocks in the official godowns, the minister said that the provincial government was having total wheat stocks of 124,808 tons sufficient to meet the daily wheat flour consumption requirements of the province for 85 days.

Furthermore, he added, the province had yet to transport some 55,190 tons of wheat from Punjab out of the total 180,000 tons the NWFP had procured from Punjab.

“Even Chitral district,” said the minister, “which has got cut off from the rest of the country due to heavy rains and snow has wheat stocks of around 17,630 tons.”

Wheat stocks position in the province, said the sources, improved from 87,024 tons during the last days of the last provincial government to 124,808 tons at present.

Official sources said that in view of the greater wheat stocks, the food department had delayed procurement of 100,000 tons of wheat as was directed by the chief minister Akram Khan Durrani.

Official sources said that though the move to increase supply of wheat from the official godowns helped the government to avoid wheat flour shortage in the province, the decision was bound to increase its expenditure on account of wheat subsidy.