LAHORE, July 30: The flour price may go up by Rs30 to Rs50 per 20Kg bag this Saturday when the millers and the food department officials meet to ‘finalise’ the cost and price ratio in the province.
The four-member committee, constituted to recommend increase in price, comprising two officials of department and two millers, has suggested a minimum increase of Rs57 and a maximum of Rs80 per 20Kg bag.
The department officials, Khalid Dhab and Arif Raza Bokhari, have conceded that ex-mill flour price should be increased to Rs422 per 20Kg – a whopping increase of Rs2.85 per kilogram if the current ex-mill price of Rs365 is taken as a benchmark. The millers’ representatives, however, demanded a killer increase of Rs4 per kilogram and raising the ex-mill price to Rs445 per 20Kg bag.
The officials, led by the food minister, secretary and director, and the millers’ representatives discussed the prospective increase on Wednesday in a meeting but failed to hammer out any consensus price. The department team sought three days to discuss the issue with the chief minister because they could not increase the price on their own.
“The department officials have conceded that ex-mill price should be increased by Rs57 per 20Kg bag given the market realities,” says a Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) office-bearer. The department officials had considered all factors of production, calculated each one of them and recommended the price, he said, adding the government should at least own the price suggested by its officials.
The government might not accept these recommendations in their entirety but it would certainly be providing relief to the millers to compensate for increase in production factors, he hoped.
“The problem with the government is that it has set many contradictory goals and was trying to achieving them simultaneously,” says a departmental official. The department was being asked to achieve all these conflicting targets, which was nearly impossible, he added.
Dilating upon these targets, he said the writ of the government did not exist in any corner of the country yet it wanted to establish its authority on flour price. The entire economy had been cartelised, yet it wanted to bust flour millers’ cartel, he added.
“On the one hand, it (the government) has been trying to control the cartel in the Punjab and on the other encouraging the millers to form the same in the NWFP. Even those millers who had no market in the NWFP have now started joining the group that has been working as a cartel in the NWFP because of high-end prices.