KARACHI: Citizens of the metropolis must prepare themselves for a double blow from rise in prices of two key commodities as the government has allowed sugar wholesalers to raise the sweetener’s price by Rs4 per kilogramme, while dairy farmers have unilaterally decided to hike milk price by the same amount.

The situation is feared to worsen further as both the sugar wholesalers and dairy farmers have refused to guarantee that the retailers will raise the price by the same amount (Rs4). Usually, the raise at the retailers’ end is higher than the hike in wholesale price.

“Price of milk has not been increased for the past four years,” said Haji Akhtar of the Karachi Dairy Farmers’ Association.

“We put the request before the Karachi commissioner a few months ago and he promised to look into it after Muharramul Haram but we have not received any response since then. So our association first decided to increase the wholesale price by Rs9 per litre and then finally brought it down to Rs4 to save consumers from extra burden. The hike will be effective from Jan 10.”

Asked about the impact of the decision at the retailers’ end, he said: “Retailers should sell milk at Rs85 per litre,” which was currently being sold at Rs80.

However, he was not sure if the retailers would lend ear to his advice as it was the responsibility of the government to put a check on the retailers after Rs4 increase by the wholesalers.

The recent raise in raw milk price has come hardly half a year after the prices of packaged milk went up by Rs5 per litre in July last year, which was the second increase in Tetra Pak milk prices after May the same year.

The situation is not much different at the commodity market with the only difference that the recent increase in sugar price has been allowed by the government itself, raising the price from Rs57 per kg to Rs60 per kg from January. However, because of ineffective monitoring by the authorities concerned the commodity also changes hands even at Rs62 and Rs63 per kg.

“The government’s wholesale price is Rs60 per kg and the retail price should be Rs62 per kg,” said Fareed Qureshi, secretary general of the Karachi Retailers Grocers Group. But he, too, was also not sure about the implementation of the government rate at the retail end which directly hit the consumers.

The wholesalers blamed the producers and also the federal government for recent hike in prices. They believed the Economic Coordination Committee’s decision to allow sugar exports of 225,000 tonnes has given an excuse to the producers and key players of the industry to increase the prices in the local market.

“The government always allows export on the pretext of surplus stocks and the same reason was given in recent decision,” said a local wholesale trader.

“The problem is that the authorities always fail to effectively monitor the activity of suppliers and producers at the local market who exploit the policy and increase prices for consumers,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2017