KARACHI: The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) administration continues to face the challenge of bringing down the prices of wheat flour in the country that shot up by Rs30 on Thursday despite the import of the commodity, traders and government officials said.
“The prices of different varieties of wheat flour range between Rs70 and Rs80 per kilogram in the retail market,” Farid Qureshi, secretary general of Karachi Retail Grocers Association, told Arab News on Thursday. “The supplier of the Ashrafi brand today increased the price by Rs30 from Rs660 per 10 kg. This used to be Rs450 last year. There is no mechanism to check such price hikes in the country.”
The shortage of wheat production has increased the prices of wheat flour, a main food staple for Pakistanis, by about 55 percent, according to retailers. The rising food prices have also ramped up the country’s inflation rate that was recorded at 9 percent in September.
The government recently allowed import of more than 1.6 million tons of wheat. The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) also constituted a three-member committee on Wednesday to negotiate the price of wheat with the Russian government for further procurement. This was done after Islamabad approved the purchase of 180,000 metric tons of wheat from Moscow, hoping that further import of the commodity would stabilize flour price in the country.
“Today [Thursday] the MD PASSCO [Managing Director of Pakistan Agricultural Storage & Services Corporation, a government-owned storage facility] is in Russia where he has gone to purchase wheat,” Muhammad Ameer Sultan, parliamentary secretary of the ministry of national food security and research, told Arab News, adding: “The arrival of ships [carrying the commodity] will normalize prices.”
Asked about the current situation, he informed: “There is only 1.4 million MT of shortage in the country.”
Pakistan’s flour millers maintained that wheat shortage was usually caused by lack of adequate measures by the government. They also claimed that keeping the private sector out of the procurement drive was also a key reason of flour price hike.
#LISTEN: "The government is unable to address the gap between the commodity’s [wheat flour] demand & supply” says Badar-ud-Din Kakar, chairman #Pakistan Flour Mills Association || #WheatFlour
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Read special by @khurshid72: https://t.co/0oIwhfWA5u pic.twitter.com/9aBS2vFZ7w— Arab News Pakistan (@arabnewspk) October 9, 2020
“The government is unable to address the gap between the commodity’s demand and supply,” Badar-ud-Din Kakar, chairman Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA), told Arab News. “This year, the government … made record purchases by procuring 4.1 million tons of the commodity. Despite that, it banned the movement of wheat. Private sector was also totally kept out of the procurement process.”
However, Sultan said the shortage was due to less procurement from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province which suffered crop damage owing to unprecedented rainfalls.
“In KP only, 20 percent target was achieved since climate change damaged the crops to a large extent. Other provinces achieved their targets by about 80 to 90 percent. KP only achieved 20 percent and now the burden of one province is being shared by others,” Sultan said.
Millers say the prices of wheat in the international market have also increased from around $235 per metric ton to $275-280. According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the country also imported 39,348 MT of wheat for $9.546 million during the July-August period of the current fiscal year.
