LAHORE, Feb 7: Sugar crisis worsens in big cities across the province amid reports of black marketeering even by the utility stores. The commodity has almost disappeared from the utility stores due to a price gap between market and stores. At stores, the government is selling sugar at Rs29 per kg against the market price of Rs42.

“There is so much difference between the market price and the stores’ that employees cannot resist,” said one of the buyers at a utility store. The stores got around 1,400 kg supply on a daily basis and hardly 400 kg of it was sold at the store and the rest of it disappeared, he said.

Long cues were witnessed at most of the stores in the city with buyers complaining about shortage.

The store employees, however, maintain that the huge price gap had shifted the entire load on these stores. The supply, though increased by the government, is still far less than the market demand. “Any one failing to get sugar accuses us of black marketeering,” says one of them.

Mr Zaka Ashraf of the Pakistan Sugar Millers Association thinks that the rising trend will continue if the government fails to stem the tide. “The product’s price at the international level is still rising and not fully translated into the local price,” he says.

“If the government fails to arrest the trend, the price may touch even Rs50 per kg in the next days,” he warns.

He says the PSMA is asking the government to forego sales tax which will bring down the price by Rs3.50 per kg at least.

The association has asked the government to levy sales tax on gur making so that more sugarcane could be directed into sugar making. Finally, the government should also allow a quota to the PSMA for free import and all these steps should provide a substantial relief to consumers, he adds.

A market analyst is of the view that “the hoarders are dictating the market because the government has failed to check them. It quickly rescued millers in 2004 when they made surplus sugar. But now when the government is short of sugar, it has failed to retrieve sugar from the hoarders and millers.

“The trend is expected to continue till the government pumps a huge quantity into the market. Hoarding is the main cause of the price rise, otherwise, the international market has not gone berserk like the domestic one,” he observes.

“The government should give a thought to the cost the consumers are paying for its policy adventures,” says a consumer from Lahore.