ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: The Federal Food Committee (FFC), tasked with controlling flour prices but with a limited mandate, is stumped by the lack of coordination between the centre and provinces over national food security.

Sources said on Saturday that since its inception, the FFC has held more than 25 meetings and taken a number of steps, but it seems to be unable to bring down flour prices and ensure uniform rates across the country even after an increase in the wheat supply quota to mills by more than 9,000 tons a day.They said the FFC was frustrated by its dependency on provinces in handling the flour crisis since it felt the flour cartel enjoyed good relations with local authorities as well as mill owners.

The FFC was constituted by President Pervez Musharraf to handle the flour crisis and to prepare a long-term plan to ensure easy availability of essential food items.

After realising the drawbacks of its limited mandate, the FFC has invited all provincial food secretaries to a meeting on Jan 30 to thrash out measures for easing the crisis.

Sources said the meeting would focus on measures to bring down flour prices and how to handle the new crop.

The sources said that there was a marked difference between the ex-mill prices of flour in Sindh, the NWFP and Punjab.

According to the FFC, distributors buy a 20-kg flour sack from mills in Karachi for Rs340-350 while the sack costs Rs285 in Punjab — a difference of Rs3 per kg.

Consumers in Punjab are getting flour at Rs17-19 a kg compared to Rs22-23 a kg in Sindh.

Sources said the main concern of the FFC Chairman, Lt-Gen (retd) Farooq Ahmed Khan, was about the committee’s inability to ensure uniform ex-mill flour prices across the country.

The committee is also not empowered to order the release of wheat quotas to new mills despite the fact that since Jan 12, mills all over the country had lifted only 31,000 tons a day, about 11,000 tons less than their daily quota.

Cumulatively, the mills had not picked a total of 154,000 tons of wheat.

This leftover is equivalent to almost a month of flour consumption of Sindh or two months of the NWFP’s, or in case of Balochistan, the supply could last three and a half months.

While mills refused to grind more wheat despite an increase in their quotas, the FFC is unable to ask them to increase their production or distribute the leftover wheat among newly established mills because the FFC is not empowered to interfere in the affairs of the provinces.

For instance, in Punjab, some 19 new mills had called for the grant of quota from the provincial government and even won a case in the Lahore High Court, but still they were unable to get a share in the wheat quota.

Similarly, the NWFP had been complaining against Punjab, accusing it of holding back fine flour supplies, while Balochistan is blaming the NWFP and Punjab for its shortages.

FFC and the NWFP officials are at odds over how to deal with the issue of smuggling of flour to Afghanistan. A large quantity of wheat was smuggled from the NWFP to Afghanistan at the start of the flour crisis.

At the same time, the province has been accusing the federal government of denying it powers to impose a 35 per cent regulatory duty on the export of flour to Afghanistan.

The FFC is in no position to probe the people who are based in Punjab, but manipulate flour supplies in the NWFP to earn hefty profits in legal and illegal flour trade.

Sources said that even if the FFC caught someone in the flour supply chain red handed, there was no mechanism for quickly convicting them. Such cases are being referred to provinces now. The FFC also has no powers to take action against hoarders.

The committee chairman has repeatedly told newsmen that the government has not provided him the list of alleged hoarders. The cabinet had provided a list to the federal ministry of food, agriculture and livestock.

Sources said the biggest challenge for the FFC was how to deal with the new wheat crop, to be harvested in March-April.