KARACHI: Meat prices shoot up to unbearable proportions
By Aamir Shafaat Khan
KARACHI, Oct 27: Consumers experienced an unprecedented hike in prices of meat — Rs200 for mutton and Rs130 for boneless beef — a day before the inception of Ramazan and with most of other essential items of daily use already getting costlier, e.g. tomatoes (Rs40 per kg) and onion (Rs12 per kg).
People might now have to carry a truck-load of cash to buy meat, vegetables, sugar and other essential items due to the utter failure of the government which put up the plea of price cut before the stakeholders without checking up stock position in various markets.
Clever meat merchants, who had already started fleecing the people by charging higher prices ahead of holy month, have come out with a surprising stance on Monday by deciding to keep their shops closed during Ramazan to protest the arbitrary fixation of prices by the city government.
General Secretary of the Meat Merchants Welfare Association (MMWA) Iqbal Qureishi says, “the government has no legal right to fix the prices. It has not conducted any spadework to check up the supply situation and availability of animal stocks in the markets. Even, the city government has not fixed the wholesale prices.
Whenever the governments all over the world fix retail prices of essential items, they check up the stock position in the markets and its future position, fix the wholesale price keeping in view the transportation cost and profit margin of shopkeepers.
“The government has not carried out the exercise and fixed the prices on its own despite reservations expressed by meat merchants,” he said. In the pre-Ramazan meetings, he added, meat merchants had assured the city government that they would sell the meat at the old rates and would not resort to any raise.
He maintained that he had told the Executive District Officer (EDO), Raeesuddin Paracha, that sales of meat had already plunged by 50 per cent due to curtailing purchasing power of consumers. On the other hand, he said, the government had done nothing to curb smuggling and rising export of meat as well as live animals, which were the main reasons for a shortage of animals and the flare up in meat prices.
He urged the city government to arrange adequate supplies of live animals otherwise meat merchants would stay at their homes as they were not going to face punishments and fines.
Meanwhile, a market analyst said that the government had persistently been making mistakes over the past two years in its price-fixing exercise. “Its job is not to fix the prices but to monitor the stocks situation in the markets — both from imports and local crops,” he said. When the government has got enough statistics with it, it may easily check the malpractice on the part of retailers and wholesalers with an aim of creating artificial price hikes.
Price regulators have virtually failed in their task to put on hold on the persistent rising trend of edible items ahead of the holy month. Even the stakeholders, knowing the fact that the government cannot dictate its terms, have given the secondary importance to the pre-Ramazan meeting invitation from the city government officials and flatly refused to attend the meetings.
Sugar barons have already enhanced the prices by Re1 per kg, from Rs19 to Rs 20, ahead of Ramazan. Onion and tomatoes remained under pressure, selling at Rs 12 and Rs 40 per kg respectively.
Mr Paracha told Dawn on Monday that meat merchants had not given any notice till Monday about their decision to keep their shops closed. “This is an attempt of sheer blackmarketing by meat merchants to charge higher prices ahead of the holy month on a meatless day and to put further burden on consumers,” he said adding that they were harassing the general public.
He said their claim that the government could not fix the prices was wrong. “Under Prevention of Profiteering and Hoarding Act-1977, we can check and fix the prices of 18 items, including meat, falling under the purview of local government,” he stressed.
He revealed that upon their demand to curb the movement of live animals to Afghanistan, the city government intended to contain the massive exodus of live animals from Karachi in a few days by invoking Section 144. He said police on highways would be asked to implement the orders and keep a strict check on the movement of animals from local bazaars.
On sugar prices, he said this item did not fall in the purview of local government, but of the federal government.
About vegetable prices, he said the same would be fixed on daily basis keeping in view the demand and supply position. Hopefully, he added, the prices would come down as soon as the new crop arrived.
