LAHORE, Aug 20: The Pakistan Flour Mills Association on Tuesday warned of flour shortage in near future if the Punjab government did not start releasing wheat to the mills from official storages.

PFMA provincial chairman Habibur Rehman Leghari told a press conference that the prices of wheat were rocketing in the open market and the supplies getting squeezed by the day. Within next few days, the open market would dry up completely, sending flour market in a tail’s spin, he feared.

He said around 30 per cent of the mills in the province were closed down because of high rates and unavailability of wheat.

Flanked by former central president Asim Raza, Muhammad Riaz and executive committee members, he asked the media persons to accompany him to a tour of the province and see themselves the closed mills.

Mr Leghari said today’s quoted rates of 40 kilogram wheat in Rawalpindi and Lahore were Rs1,440 and it was not possible for mills to provide flour at current (agreed) rates after buying such expensive wheat.

Asim Raza said the mills had been writing to the director food and secretary food since 20th of Ramazan about the situation, requesting them to start releasing wheat from the government stocks. However, the cabinet committee was yet to meet to decide about the issue.

He said the government had sufficient stocks. Traditionally, wheat releases started in October every year but this year the Punjab government bought 900,000 ton additional wheat and made the open market dry up early.

He said increase in the prices of electricity, POL products and wheat was pressing the millers to enhance the prices of flour and early release of wheat from official stocks would help stabilise price and facilitate the consumers.

As regards import of wheat, he said some private parties had imported wheat in Sindh. He appealed to the government not to allow import of wheat from former Russian estates as it was meant for animal feed.—Staff Reporter