03 October 2004	Sunday	17 Shaban 1425

PESHAWAR, Oct 2: The growing export of flour to Afghanistan has given rise to demand for it in the local market making it difficult for the provincial government to check prices of flour, according to official and market sources.

The increase in demand for flour from across the border, said the market sources, had put the NWFP's flour markets under pressure adding more to the government's incapacity to keep the prices at a reasonable level.

Dozens of trucks loaded with flour bags of 85 kilograms each leave for Afghanistan everyday from the provincial capital's food grains market at Rampura gate.

Though the increase in export of flour to Afghanistan, according to sources, has boosted economic activities in Peshawar, other towns of the NWFP and adjoining Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), it has also brought with it numerous problems, foremost being the provincial government's inability to check the prices of flour and the conversion of Afghani (Afghan currency) into Pakistani rupee.

"Unlimited exports have strong bearing on the rising prices of flour in the NWFP," said a senior official of the provincial government.

Officials posted at Torkham on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border said that between 30 and 35 trucks loaded with flour bags, of 85 kilograms each, were crossing over to other side of the border everyday - a point also confirmed by Peshawar-based market sources.

A leading flour dealer of the provincial capital, doing business with Afghan importers, said that between 2,000 tons and 2,500 tons flour was being transported everyday from the Rampura Gate's flour market to different markets inside Afghanistan via Torkham, some 55 kilometres in the west of Peshawar on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

"Exports of flour being made from other border-crossings are other than what is being transported via Torkham," said the dealer.

An officer of the NWFP food department, when contacted, told Dawn that the federal government's policy regarding export of flour to Afghanistan had pushed the provincial government to the wall, making it a non-starter in the whole business.

The situation, he added, had further undermined the provincial government's authority to keep prices under control as, according to him, the federal government's wheat policy had left it with little role to influence flour market and flour mill owners who are heavily relying on procurement of wheat from Punjab's open market.

"There is no difference of margin of profitability in doing business with Afghanistan and in the local market, but it is the size of the business which is making the difference for flour dealers," said an office-bearer of the flour dealers association.

"I have negligible business with local parties, whereas, it is the Afghan markets I am presently concentrating on," said a wholesaler. However, the benefit of increasing exports, according to market sources, has been of much benefit to Punjab's flour mill owners who are supplying flour in huge quantity to markets in Peshawar and other important towns of the NWFP.

"Peshawar's market receives between 40 and 50 trucks of flour from Punjab everyday, whereas, the figure comes to about 400 trucks being received everyday from different parts in Punjab," said a flour dealer.

The five-month-long ban on the transportation of wheat from Punjab to other provinces, which rendered more than 95 per cent of the 260 flour mills set up in the NWFP closed down due to shortage of wheat, benefited the Punjab mill owners.

During the entire five months period when wheat's transportation to the NWFP was prohibited from Punjab, its (Punjab's) flour mills kept dumping their products in Peshawar's markets, which acted as the main supply line for exports to Afghanistan.