KARACHI, March 12: Another wheat and flour crisis is brewing owing to belated announcement of unrealistic procurement price by the government.
With the wheat harvesting yet to start in Sindh and elsewhere, traders have already entered deals with growers at much higher rates than the officially fixed procurement price.
As per the current situation there are hardly any wheat stocks in the open market and flour mills are also receiving lesser supplies from the government.
A spokesman of flour mills told Dawn that presently 622 bags of 100 kg each are daily supplied from the government stocks to about 70 flour mills in the city. In the past over 1,000 bags of the government wheat were daily supplied to the mills.
Consequently, traders are desperately waiting for the arrival of new crop, which is late by two to three weeks. In the lower Sindh harvesting is due to start by the end of this month and in Punjab early next month.
However, harvesting in Punjab will bring some relief to supply side.
The lower procurement price fixed by the government has disappointed growers, who feel that the government is ready to support the growers of other countries by importing wheat at higher rates but is not ready to give due return to its growers.
The fixed procurement price of Rs510 per 100 kg bag is considered far less than the cost being incurred by the wheat growers, who are demanding at least Rs600 per 100kg. Reporting coming for Sindh wheat fields disclose that traders have entered into deal with growers at Rs580 per 100 kg for end March or early next month delivery.
After exporting wheat at around $200 per ton the country imported wheat at $450 per ton, which comes to about Rs32 per kg but the procurement price fixed by the government gives growers only Rs12 per kg. This wide disparity and difference in price is being rightly agitated by the growers.
They feel that when prices of all sort of produces in the world market are going high why they are being deprived of an essentially right price, if not an equal price.
The government has also directed flour mills not to extract white refined atta (maida) from wheat and should restrict the wheat bran up to 10 per cent only to avoid atta shortage in the city. In the past flour mills were allowed to extract 10 per cent maida and 10 per cent bran from the wheat.
Flour mills have been given indication by Islamabad that the government will stop releasing wheat from its stocks to mills in Sindh from March 16, and the same will be implemented in Punjab from April 16.
However, the local food department did not confirm this report and denied having received such advice from Islamabad.
Johar Ali Kandhari, a senior member of Pakistan Flour Mills Association told Dawn the wheat crisis could not be tackled by increasing production or bringing more land under cultivation but by developing world standard storage facilities to avoid wastage, which is presently very high at about 30 per cent.
Being an agro-based economy the first priority should be to have proper storage facilities for our farm products and there is also an urgent need of building silos across the country.
