LAHORE, Dec 1: The Punjab food department on Monday increased the price of wheat for millers by Rs5 per 40kg —- from Rs330 to Rs335.
The release price has been increased under the cascading policy adopted by the department in October to recover the cost of storage.
The millers on their part warned that the increase in price would soon reflect in the flour price. “The millers brought the flour price down to Rs198 per 20kg for the holy month of Ramazan,” says Bilal Sufi of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association. Now, this price would naturally revert to Rs204 per 20kg. But with a fresh increase in wheat price, the flour price would range from Rs210 to Rs220 per 20kg depending on the quality of flour.
The latest increase in wheat price would also affect the price in private sector, which was already touching Rs400 per 40kg and with the food department increasing the price by Rs5, the private sector would increase it by at least Rs10 per 40kg. In fact, the price of wheat had already gone up to Rs410 per 40kg on Monday, he said and warned: “One must keep his fingers crossed and see how the wheat market reacts to the latest increase.”
Explaining the increase, an official of the food department said that the new support price of Rs350 per 40kg would take effect next April. This means that price of flour would go up substantially. The government is just trying to make that increase look progressive. Still another increase is due in the beginning of the next year, he said.
Meanwhile, a high level meeting was presided over by Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi and attended by provincial food minister Chaudhry Iqbal, Chief Secretary Hafeez Akhtar Randhawa, Secretary (Finance) Salman Siddique and Secretary (Food) Shahid Hussain.
The meeting was told that the food department had also increased the quantity of wheat released to millers from 11,000 tons to 12,000 per day. The meeting also noted with satisfaction that the position of wheat stocks in the province was satisfactory. But since there is no ban on inter-provincial movement of wheat, it is feared that stocks from the Punjab might be used to meet requirements of the other province. The government also does not intend to impose such a ban.
For this reason, wheat might be imported to meet the requirements of NWFP and Sindh. The chief minister, expressing concern over the increase in prices of some items of daily use, directed the food department to take effective measures to normalize the prices.
He said that executive district officers had been empowered to stabilize the prices of consumer items at a reasonable level and asked to take strict action when and where needed.
The chief minister directed the district coordination officers (DCOs) to submit a daily report to the government regarding prices of essential items like vegetables, pulses, meat, atta and ghee. He also directed all ministers to implement the price reduction plan in their respective areas.
The chief minister also directed that regular meetings of district price control committees be held to ensure strict monitoring and collection of accurate data.