• Milk sells at Rs190 a litre against official rate of Rs180
• Half-hearted efforts being made to enforce official prices
• Retailers blame wholesalers for violating official rate

KARACHI: Despite getting an increase of Rs10 per litre from Karachi commissioner in loose milk rate, which is now officially set at Rs180 per litre, most retailers defying the official rate sell loose milk at Rs190 per litre in the metropolis.

With the jump in milk prices, the price of yogurt has also gone up to Rs280-300 from Rs260-280 per kilo depending on the area.

Meanwhile, no visible action is taken by authorities to impose the official milk rates in the city.

The retailers said that it was hard for them to sell milk at the official rate after procuring the dairy product at ‘higher’ rates from wholesalers.

However, some retailers have kept the rate at Rs180 per litre either for fear of strict action from regulator like heavy fines or by compromising the quality of milk by adding more water into it.

The Karachi commissioner had on Dec 16 increased the retail price of milk from Rs170 to Rs180. The official rate of wholesale was also increased from Rs160 per litre to Rs170.

The media coordinator of the Karachi Milk Retailers Association, Waheed Gaddi, told Dawn that 60-70 per cent of milk retailers in the city had started charging Rs190 per litre for loose milk from consumers after purchasing milk at Rs182-184 per litre from wholesalers whose official rate was fixed at Rs170 per litre.

He said that some one to two per cent of retailers were selling milk at Rs200 per litre.

He claimed that the government did not take notice of the price hike by the wholesalers and never imposed any fine on them. “The government finds it easy to grill the retailers for overcharging and imposes heavy fines, which is unjustified,” he added.

Mr Waheed claimed that dairy farmers were selling milk to wholesalers at official rate of Rs163 per litre, but the wholesalers were not ready to provide milk to retailers at the commissioner’s rate.

He said 90 per cent wholesalers were situated in Malir while a majority of cattle colonies were also located in the same area.

Amid harsh economic conditions due to soaring cost of living, it is calculated that a typical consumer may brave a monthly bill of Rs5,700 for daily consumption of one litre of milk after Rs10 per litre increase as previously he was paying Rs5,400 in the same head last month.

Speaking to Dawn, Shakir Gujjar of Dairy and Cattle Farmers’ Association had claimed that the official rate was totally against the market reality because the cost of production of one litre milk was Rs200 while the dairy farmers’ price had been fixed at Rs163 per litre.

He had demanded that the milk price was fixed at Rs230 per litre after taking into account freight rates and profit of middlemen and retailers.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2022