HYDERABAD: Chakki owners have closed their shops for want of required supplies of wheat from public food godowns.

A quota of 20,000 wheat bags for Jan 15-31 fortnight was said to have been approved only on Wednesday by the food department to be supplied to chakkis and roller flour mills.

Due to inadequate supplies of wheat, chakki owners have closed their shops as according to them they could not bear losses. Secondly, they claimed that the district administration was also asking them to sell wheat at Rs52 per kilogram as retail price, which was not possible. They were suffering losses as the food department was supplying them wheat quota of 174kg per stone a day, they said. It was increased only recently from 140kg per stone per day. Flour mills get major share in overall wheat released from the food department.

Hyderabad Atta Chakki Owners Association general secretary Haroon Arain claimed that 174kg was exhausted in two hours, forcing them to buy expensive wheat at current rate of Rs52 per kg from the open market to meet flour production requirement, which took flour production cost to Rs66 after including overhead charges.

“The administration wants us to sell this flour at retail price of Rs52 per kg as if we have bought wheat at Rs34.50 per kg,” he said. He said that when they sold flour at Rs66 per kg, the administration forced them to sell it at official price of Rs52/kg because it calculated wheat’s cost at Rs34.50 per kg, at which the food department was required to supply,” he said.

He said that neither the food department increased wheat supplies nor the administration fixed per 100kg bag price of wheat for the open market. Still it was pressing the chakki owners to supply flour at Rs52 per kg, which was not possible, he said.

“Only today we are provided challan by the food department for getting 174kg wheat per stone per day quota,” he said. He explained that each chakki owner required 2,400kg wheat per day as per capacity, but at least half of that should be released by the department. “Only 7.25pc of actual daily requirement [for flour production] is being provided, forcing us to purchase expensive wheat from the open market or close shops,” he said.

The food department is said to be busy in lifting wheat stocks released by the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (Passco). Under prime minister’s directives, Passco had promised to provide 400,000 tonnes of wheat in Nov 2019 after wheat crisis was reported in Sindh. Around 100,000 tonnes was lifted last year and supplied to flour mills and chakki owners in Sindh.

“Another 51,000 tonnes out of the remaining 300,000 tonnes was being lifted from Passco’s facilities located in Dera Allahyar, Sahiwal, Khanewal, Bahawal­nagar and other districts,” said an official. The Sindh food department was bearing incidental charges and procurement of wheat to be paid to Passco.

The Sindh food department currently is said to have stocks of 390,000 tonnes of wheat crop. Of this 390,000 tonnes 80pc stocks were from 2017-18 season and the remaining were from 2016-17 season. Passco was supplying the wheat it had procured in 2018-19. Sindh had not procured a single tonne of wheat last year, which caused the shortage.

According to the district food controller of Hyderabad, no chakki was closed recently. “We have enough stocks of wheat to meet requirement of chakki owners and roller flour mills” he said.

The Sindh agriculture department expects close to four million tonnes of wheat production in 2019-20 season after the province missed production target of 3.8m tonnes in 2018-19 season by 7.8pc. The food department is said to have proposed 1.4m tonnes of wheat procurement target to the Sindh government for approval. No decision is taken by the government yet.

Wheat’s harvesting usually begins in Mirpurkhas division by February’s end and the crop starts reaching market in early March.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2020