PESHAWAR, Oct 22: The NWFP government has made arrangements to sell more than 1.4 million flour bags of 20kg each at reduced prices across the province for which it would provide wheat from its stocks to flour mills at subsidized rates, according to sources.

The move is designed to offset the impact of rising prices of flour on consumers during Ramazan. The government would provide wheat to flour mills at Rs9,000 per ton instead of the prices of Rs10,000 per ton.

In this way, a subsidy of Rs1,000 would be extended on every ton of wheat supplied to mills. However, according to the sources, the subsidized wheat would be provided only in a limited quantity as the government's kitty does not allow it to provide wheat at cut-price throughout Ramazan.

The government, said the market and official sources, had devised a mechanism for selling flour at lower rates to ensure that the benefit reached the consumers, and not the millers or flour dealers.

The provincial government calls it the 'Ramazan package'. Market sources, however, were sceptical about the success of the move. "It is not likely to impact the market as far as controlling the prices of flour is concerned," said a market source.

Officials said the government would supervise the sales of flour in all the districts where flour would be sold at lower rates. As the government intended to sell a specific quantity, the supervision of sales would be made on every Sunday - during Ramazan - when it would market the commodity produced from the subsidized wheat.

The government plans to sell 285,000 bags of 20kg each on every Sunday at a reduced price of Rs207 per bag. So far, a total of 570,000 bags have been sold in all the districts, except in Chitral and Kohistan where wheat was sold at subsidized rates in place of flour because of non-existence of flour mills there.

Some 855,555 bags are to be sold during the remaining three Sundays in Ramazan - 285,000 bags each time. "The government could not persuade millers to sell the subsidized wheat flour at Rs200 per bag following which the two sides agreed on a Rs207 price-tag," said a spokesman for the Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA), the NWFP chapter.

Market sources said the regulated price of flour was comparatively higher than that fixed by the government of Punjab. Officials said the subsidized wheat would be provided to millers in a way that 3,000 bags would go, on every Sunday, to each of the 100 constituencies of the provincial assembly.

The millers would be responsible for the transportation of flour bags to designated sale points, to be identified by the member of the provincial assembly concerned.