KARACHI, March 22: Flour millers have urged the State Bank of Pakistan to reduce cash margin on their bank credits from 25 to 10 per cent, and also to resume the facility of running finance for their businesses.

At a joint press conference at Karachi Press Club on Saturday, Mohammad Naeem Butt, President of Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA), and leaders of all provincial chapters of the association, declared that without this cut on cash margin and resumption of running finance facility, they would be forced to close down their businesses which would give an open field to speculators, hoarders and profiteers who would create a wheat crisis of much greater magnitude than witnessed in the outgoing season of 2007-08.

“Wheat output in the current crop is 15 per cent less than the official target,’’ Mr Butt answered to a question and urged the government to immediately arrange import of at least two million tons of good quality wheat to avert a wheat crisis in the coming season.

The flour millers also demanded that all non-genuine buyers of wheat, like ginners, husking millers and chicken feed industry, be disallowed to buy wheat.

The chicken feed industry, the flour millers alleged, bought two million tons of wheat last season to supply grains to buyers in the foreign countries by starving their own countrymen.

Last year the flour millers blamed the government for creating a wheat crisis by allowing export before building up a strategic reserve and this provided a chance to speculators, profiteers and hoarders to create a crisis of unparallel magnitude.

“Instead of realising its own wrongdoings and correcting itself, the government is punishing flour mills by cutting down on their wheat quotas and levying a 25 per cent cash margin on bank loans.

If the government did not respond to the proposals of flour millers, they warned, a wheat crisis of much greater magnitude would hit the country.

For averting such a crisis, the leaders proposed that the government should import two million tons of wheat, build up strategic reserve of seven or six million tons of wheat and effectively check entry of all non-genuine buyers in wheat market.