KARACHI, Jan 8: The Sindh food department on Tuesday fixed an ex-mill rate for wheat flour of Rs17 per kilogram over 50 per cent lower than the current rate -- Rs35.

“This is not a coercively fixed ex-mill rate, but determined after involving the Sindh Flour Mills’ Association in the decision- making during a meeting today,” Sindh Food Secretary Naveed Kamran said at a press conference on Tuesday. Mr Iqbal, of the Sindh Flour Mills Association, also addressed the press conference.

“This rate has not been fixed unilaterally,” Mr Kamran said, asserting that the department had to fix ex-mill rate on its own.”

He said that the government had reached an agreement with the millers under which 70 mills in Karachi would be provided wheat on subsidised rates.

Millers have promised to distribute this flour to consumers from their own fair price stores and finally through retail outlets.

With a stock of 250,000 tons of wheat, he said, the government was providing about 45,000 to 50,000 tons to the local mills and has assured the millers of more wheat after the allocated share from imports.

“The Karachi City Government will enforce a price on which wheat will be made available to consumers from retail outlets in the city,” the food secretary said.

An official of the city government also attended the meeting.

“We have asked for additional quantity from imported wheat to offset the impact of the lean period of January and February,” he said.

Mr Iqbal, the leader of the millers, said wheat and flour shortages were being felt in both urban and rural areas of the province and it was the responsibility of the federal government to increase the allocation for Sindh to offset this shortage.

“Wheat flour consumption increases during January and February in the province,” he said.

The rural population normally stored wheat in their own stocks for round the year consumption.

But this year, the increasing demand for wheat across the border, the rural people with no choice but to sell their own stocks to grain brokers, who exported or smuggled this out to neighbouring countries.

The Sindh food secretary called fixing of ex-mill rate of flour at Rs17 a “great breakthrough.”