ISLAMABAD, April 26: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on Tuesday took a strong notice of ‘cartelization of the sugar market’ despite the supply being sufficient and termed the rising sugar prices unrealistic, without any reason and having no link with the market realities.
The meeting presided over by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, however, took no decision for the time being to check sugar prices which have gone up to Rs28 per kg, Dr Ashfaq Hasan Khan, official spokesman and director-general of the debt coordination cell, told a news briefing.
“The meeting decided to concentrate on sugar prices and the next ECC meeting would be given a detailed presentation on this subject,” he said.
He declined to comment when asked if some cabinet members who owned sugar mills were opposing action to break this cartelization, and said that the meeting had taken a strong cognizance of the high sugar prices ranging from Rs26 to 28 per kg in the open market and termed them as ‘cartel prices’.
Dr Khan said at present a sugar stock of two million tons was available in open market. In addition, the TCP has a stock of 360,000 tons of sugar. He said the government had earlier allowed import of refined sugar and till April 16, 2005, letters of credits had been opened to import 212,000 tons of sugar and shipments had started arriving.
He said the ECC had also decided to immediately import 250,000 tons of urea, plus minus 10 per cent, for the Kharif season (April-September). He said it was for the first time that the government had allowed import of urea for Kharif. He said 238,000 tons of urea had been imported for Rabi.
Responding to a question, he said the demand of urea stood at 2.429 million tons during Kharif. The local production of urea is at 2.267 million tons. The decision to import 250,000 tons of urea, he said, had been taken to meet the shortfall.
He said the prime minister had directed the ministry of industries to come up with a plan to increase urea production and he himself planned to meet people involved in fertilizers and gas industries.
He said that prices of flour had started declining as wheat harvested in Sindh had started reaching the market.
Mr Khan said the ECC had decided to extend Telenor mobile phone company’s grace period of four years to deposit the first instalment of $145.5 million, which is 50 per cent of its licence fee, to ensure a level playing field as Telenor and Al-Warid had objected to an earlier ECC decision in which it had relaxed such rules for Paktel.
Under rules, he said, mobile phone companies had to deposit $291 million for licence to operate in the country. They were bound to deposit 50 per cent of the amount as down payment and the remaining 50 per cent in 10 instalments.
He said the ECC had rejected the unbundling of the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGP) for their restructuring and privatization. Instead, he added, the meeting had approved that both the utilities would be restructured and privatized in their existing forms.
The ECC decided that the goods under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA) would be transported by Pakistan Raiways and the National Logistic Cell (NLC) would compete with the railways in transporting the goods other than ATTA. If the Pakistan Railways and the NLC remained short of capacity then private sector would be asked to transport the goods.
Mr Khan said the ECC deferred a decision relating to concessions for the import of vehicles under the personal baggage scheme, gift scheme and transfer of residence scheme for overseas Pakistanis.
He did not agree with the suggestion that the postponement was to benefit the local industry which was unable to meet the demand, and said the decision would be taken in the next budget.
In reply to a question, he said that workers’ remittances would touch $4 billion mark by June 30. He said the foreign investment had increased to $900.7 million during the July-March period as against $586.85 million in the same period last year.
