MULTAN, Oct 6: After a strong countrywide protest over the shortage and high prices of wheat and wheat flour the prime minister announced on September 15 to import one million tons wheat to meet the wheat crisis.

The decision of importing wheat had a good impact and prices started coming down.

Speculators and hoarders brought out their wheat stocks and it was on the record that soon after the announcement the price of wheat in Karachi decreased from Rs16,000 per ton to Rs12,500.

The prime minister also directed the provinces to streamline wheat supply to flour mills and to ensure that the commodity is available at reasonable price in the open market. He also directed the provinces to activate magistrates to check prices of essential items during Ramazan and take exemplary action against the hoarders.

The prime minister also directed the ministry of interior to strictly monitor the measures taken by various agencies to check smuggling of wheat in close coordination with the provincial governments.

Although it seemed that the government was serious to control the high price of this essential staple food item, especially in urban areas but despite all the tall government claims the problem still exists.

The main reason behind the government failure to control the prices of wheat and wheat flour is delay in import of wheat and till now the government had issued import tender notices of only 100,000 tons wheat instead of one million tons.

The assignment to import the wheat was given to the TCP. There are five tested import destinations vide SRO No 1709 (I) 2005, namely America, Canada, Australia, Russia and Central Asian Republics (CAR) in the wheat import list. But the TCP in its tender notices also mentioned Ukraine as the 6th origin although it was not listed in the said SRO.

Despite the approved specification standard, the decision of TCP to import wheat from Ukraine is very surprising and has generated many questions.

The delay in importing wheat became a blessing for hoarders and speculators because they were worried over the decision to import one million tons wheat and had started to bring out their hoarded wheat in the market that resulted immediate reduction of wheat and wheat flour prices but later they stopped releasing their stocks due to delay in import and consequently prices started rising again. Now the price wheat in Karachi is Rs15,000 per ton that could further increase in coming days.

The government agencies have badly failed to monitor the measures taken to check smuggling of wheat and did not take any step to monitor supplies from the flour mills.Abdul Malik, Chairman TCP was not available for comments.