PESHAWAR, Sept 13: Retail prices of flour have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the NWFP in the last one month, according to consumers and dealers.Data collated from the local flour market suggests that a 20-kg bag of flour was available for Rs270 a month ago, which is now selling at between Rs380 and Rs400.

Flour dealers attribute the surge in prices to pre-Ramazan hoarding and drop in the supply of the commodity from Punjab.

They said more than 20 million consumers in the NWFP mainly depended on flour brought in from Punjab. The local consumers were suffering also due to the enhanced transportation costs, which push the prices further up.

The supply, they said, had ground to a halt, compounding problems faced by the consumers.

In the last two days the price of a 20-kg flour bag has gone up from Rs310 to Rs400.

The dealers explained that the local mills did not produce good quality flour, leaving them with no option but to bring in the commodity from Punjab, where too the prices were on the rise.

The dealers predicted that the prices of flour in the NWFP would go up further, if supply from Punjab was not restored soon.

Naeem Butt, provincial chairman of the All Pakistan Flour Mills Association, told Dawn that the flour industry in NWFP was incapable of bringing prices down because of less than the required supply of wheat by the provincial food department.

He said the provincial government had been releasing 1.5 million tons of wheat to the local mills, whereas at present the releases were not more than 0.250 million tons, subsequently leaving the consumers at the mercy of flour mills in Punjab.

On the other hand, the provincial government had announced the provision of 20-kg bags at a rate of Rs250 during the month of Ramazan for which the local flour mills would be provided wheat on subsidised rates.

Under the plan, 3,000 bags would be supplied to each provincial constituency once a week.

Mr Butt believed that although such a facility would help in mitigating the misery of the poor to some extent, it could not be termed a real solution to the problem. He called for serious efforts to deal with the situation.