November 07, 2006	Tuesday	Shawwal 14, 1427

KARACHI, Nov 6: Dairy farmers have again started making a case for the price hike in fresh milk on the basis of rising feed ingredients’ prices while the city government appears more concerned in checking price at the retail stage instead of wholesale or dairy farmers’ stage.

The farmers had threatened to increase the rates in September with the advent of Ramazan but they had deferred the price hike in respect of the holy month. Now they are again flexing their muscles to get a raise in prices.

The city government, which has planned to re-start price checking campaign, held a meeting with dairy farmers few days back in order to discuss the situation.

The dairy farmers are now waiting for a second call from the government for a meeting in which the stakeholders will tell them about the sky- rocketing prices of feed ingredients and its impact on the cost of production.

People in Karachi consume over six million litres of fresh milk, including tetra and powder milk out of a total production of four million litres, while the rest of the demand is met by powder and tetra milk. Around 0.6 million buffalos all over the city produce four million litres of milk.

Consumers, who rely on powder and tetra milk, are already burdened with frequent increase in milk prices by the companies but the federal and provincial governments are more interested in taking to task only the fresh milk producers instead of multinational companies.

The Dairy Farmers Association Karachi on Monday revealed that the price of some essential feed ingredients like cottonseed cake has flared up to Rs700 per 50 kg, showing a jump of Rs100 in the last few days due to increase in prices of cotton.

The current price of wheat bran is Rs320 per 34 kg, which was Rs205 last year. Wheat straw price has risen to Rs180 per 40 kg as it was available at Rs80-90 last year. Green grass and green husk sell at Rs90 per 34 kg and Rs500 per 37 kg, respectively.

“Our cost now comes to Rs37.50 per litre due to rising prices of feed ingredients but we sell them at reduced rates by suffering financial losses,” association’s Joint Secretary Dr Rafeequddin Babar said adding that the price of milk at retail stage should be Rs40 a litre.

He said if the government did not contain price hike in feed ingredients then it will be next impossible to keep the prices of fresh milk at the present level. The city government is exerting pressure on milk traders to curb the milk prices but it does not check the rising feed ingredients prices, he said.

It has been noticed that the city governments in the past have been allowing increase in prices of fresh milk to the dairy farmers. Consumers now smell some kind of a deal between the stakeholders and the city government officials for increasing the rates.

The city government has been trying to show sympathy with the consumers by creating harassment in the market by imposing fines and sending the retailers to jails but on the other hand they have been virtually given green signal to the stakeholders to increase the rates.

Consumers, on the other hand, have been facing the brunt by finally paying the higher prices despite various price-checking campaigns and imposition of fines on the retailers.

Retailers said that when they got milk at higher rates from the farmers, why the city government is bent upon checking the price at retail stage instead of putting hand on the dairy farmers and the wholesalers.