Daily commodities: Food prices increase by up to 30% before Ramazan

Shortage of wheat, brown chickpea, gram flour and sugar likely.

RAWALPINDI:

As Ramazan approaches, prices of essential commodities have increased by up to 30% in Rawalpindi markets, with further increase in prices expected in the coming weeks.

Shopkeepers said that all national and multi-national companies selling essential food commodities such as sugar, spices, tomatoes, chicken, white chickpea (dal safed chana), brown chickpea(dal lal chana), flour, potato, red chilli and gram flour have increased prices of these items by 15 to 30%.

In the open market, the per kilogram price of brown chickpea increased from Rs70 to Rs80, white chickpea from Rs130 to Rs150, mash pulse (dal mash) from Rs150 to Rs160, green gram (dal moong) from Rs155 to Rs165, red lentil (dal masoor) from Rs115 to Rs120, and brown black-eyed pea price increased from Rs95 to Rs120; sugar is being sold at Rs76 per kg.

Sources added that the government could face shortage of wheat, brown chickpea, gram flour (besan) and sugar due to delay in import of the items and insufficient wheat production this year.

Production of chickpea crop was 40% less than last year and to meet the shortage the government imported substandard chickpea from Australia, packaged as “Chana for animals”, some shopkeepers alleged. The imported chickpea is being used for making gram flour (besan/chane ka atta), source added.

Wholesalers Association Rawalpindi President Haji Salehleen and Secretary Ghulam Qadir said that the government is busy in its politics and has made no arrangement for Ramazan. They said that the local government has failed to control prices of daily food items, despite several announcements in this regard.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2011.