PESHAWAR, May 22: People are likely to pay more for flour owing to government’s failure to acquire the commodity from Punjab through official channels, flourmill owners and dealers say.
“There are two types of purchases. One is government to government and another is dealer to dealer. We buy most of the commodity from the market, therefore people have to pay more,” said Mohammad Sadiq, president of the NWFP Flour Mills Association. The official rate of 40kg of wheat was Rs625, but they purchased its from the open market in Punjab for Rs1,200, he said.He said a 20kg bag of flour in Punjab was available at Rs370 and its price in the NWPF was Rs600.
The prices in the NWFP had gone up because till recent there was a ban on wheat and flour movement to the province from Punjab. Dealers in the Frontier province had to buy smuggled flour, which was then sold at enhanced prices,” Mr Sadiq told Dawn.
According to him, only 105 of 250 flourmills in the NWFP were operational due to wheat shortage. He said the province’s annual wheat production was one million tons against the requirement of 3.3 million tons. The federal government, last month, had promised to supply one million tons of wheat to the province, which has not been done yet.
Even after the supply of the commodity by the federal government, he added, there would be a shortage of 1.3 million tons of wheat, due to which the prices were likely to remain high in the province. “We fear that the wheat crisis will persist and the prices will go up further if the government fails to acquire wheat from Punjab through official channels,” he said.
Mr Sadiq said the government’s recent decision to allow import of the commodity could provide some breathing space, but it would be seen when the dealers and flourmill owners would start importing wheat from prospective countries, like Saudi Arabia, the US, Australia and Canada etc.
He said the federal government could improve the situation by purchasing wheat from Punjab through the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Supplies Corporation and supplying it to the provinces according to their requirements.
Despite the beginning of wheat harvest, the Frontier province is depending on flour transported through illegal means from Punjab.
Under the law, Punjab that produced 24 million tons of wheat per annum was required to sell surplus commodity to the federal government for distribution among the provinces, Mr Sadiq said, adding there was no serious effort on part of provincial and federal governments to solve the problem.
“The problem of mismanagement by the government has resulted in the crisis. The government has failed to acquire wheat flour from the Punjab government and control smuggling to Afghanistan,” he said.
Last week, a meeting of political agents and district coordination officers under the chief secretary had resolved to check smuggling of flour across the border, but there was no let up and the commodity was being transported to Afghanistan as usual, he said.
NWFP Wholesale Food Grain Association president Rambail Khan said: “We are hand to mouth. We get the commodity on daily basis. There is no mechanism to end the crisis.”
He said they had acquired 310 metric tons of flour from Sargodha on Thursday, but they would need getting new permit everyday.
He said the Punjab government was using delaying tactics in reaching practicable arrangements with the Frontier government for supply of wheat.