PESHAWAR, Sept 23: The revival of NWFP government's wheat disbursement operations has failed to bring down price of atta in the province, according to official and market sources.

In line with the federal government's wheat policy, the NWFP government, like other provincial governments, started providing wheat from its god owns to flour mills from September 1, 2004.

The market sources said it was being expected that the retail price of atta would see a marginal decrease, if not significant, following the commencement of wheat disbursement operations.

"Technically speaking the move should have benefited the consumers because the provincial government is providing the wheat at subsidized rates to flour mills," said an official. "However, the move has been of no impact as far as the prices of atta are concerned which remain unchanged."

"The retail price of atta has not decreased in comparison with the price before September 1 - the date the government started providing wheat to flour mills across the province," conceded another official when reached on Thursday.

The price of a bag of 20-kg (fine quality) ranged between Rs260 and Rs265 in Peshawar's food and grains market. The price of 20-kg brown atta (ordinary quality) ranged between Rs240 and Rs245.

Dealers told Dawn that they were selling the commodity at the same price even during the five-month long period when Punjab government's ban on transportation of wheat to other provinces had rendered 95 per cent of the NWFP mills out of operations because of non-availability of wheat.

"The revival of wheat disbursement operations has not even benefited the flour mills," said a miller. An office-bearer of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA), NWFP, said the facility to provide wheat to flour mills at subsidized rates did not bring down the retail price of the commodity because of the nominal quantity being provided to the flour mills from provincial government's official god owns.

"The government is distributing less than 1,000 tons of wheat among 140 plus flour mills which are functional out of a total of 262 mills set up in the province," said the miller.

According a spokesman for the PFMA, the government was releasing about 857 tons of wheat from its stocks every day against 1,429 tons what it should have been releasing in September every day in accordance with the quota it had fixed (for disbursement) for each of 24 districts of the province.

Officials of the NWFP food department also admitted that the government was not releasing wheat in accordance with the quota fixed for the ongoing month. The NWFP government has allocated Rs1 billion under the head of wheat subsidy for the current financial year, which is Rs2.6 billion less than the amount the province used to spend under the head before entering into a loan agreement with the World Bank two years back.