KARACHI, March 14: The Sindh Food Department is officially beginning on Saturday the wheat procurement from farmers in Mirpurkhas and some other places in lower Sindh at the officially fixed price of Rs510 for 40 kg when the current price is being quoted at Rs590 to Rs600.
“We don’t expect a favourable response from the farmers for obvious reasons,” a government official responded to Dawn’s query. He was, however, confident that within the next week or ten days when the new elected government takes over their first priority would be genuine wheat prices for the farmers and availability of wheat flour for the urban consumers at affordable prices.
Official wheat procurement in Punjab begins from third week of March or first of April. Officials in Karachi expect announcement of a new support price before the wheat procurement begins in Punjab and also a comprehensive plan to counter the moves of speculators, hoarders and profiteers in the market.
Top government functionaries at the federal and provincial levels and the PPP and PML-N leaders, who are about to form governments by next week or so, are aware of the market conditions and the fact that the speculators and hoarders are active again to create wheat and wheat flour crisis.
“We know that non-genuine buyers of wheat are also very active in the market as they were last season,” an official disclosed. The non-genuine buyers in official parlance are other than those, who are not issued grain trade licence by the food department.
They are mostly people from chicken feedstock industry, ginners and rice husk mill owners, who in nexus with stock brokers and commodity operators book huge quantity of wheat in anticipation of getting a good return in next few months.
The government had a list of such speculative buyers and hoarders in the last season, the official disclosed and pointed out that no action was taken by the federal or provincial governments of Sindh and Punjab “purely for political considerations.” They will not be spared this time by a popular elected government,” the official said with confidence.
The State Bank of Pakistan has already issued instructions to restrict bank credits only to flour millers. The provincial governments in Sindh and Punjab are expected to develop a mechanism and infrastructure to closely monitor and ensure a steady draw down of wheat stock hypothecated against bank credit. “Let’s hope the government functionaries in Karachi and Lahore have learnt lessons from last year’s big scam,” a market analyst remarked. An MNA-elect from Sindh, who is also a PPP Senator, disclosed that the party legislators had received briefings on the economic scenario, including the wheat situation from economists and top bureaucrats. “There were daylong meetings on Thursday and Saturday on the economy,” he said. He wondered as to how the top and senior bureaucrats appear to be indifferent to the sufferings of the common people.“No doubt the challenge is tough,” he said and warned of a “difficult period” ahead. Nonetheless, he was confident that the political leadership will soon find solutions to all the problems, including that of wheat, energy crisis, the spiralling international oil prices, accumulated budget deficit and yawning trade gap.
