Flour crisis looms over twin cities

Punjab food dept impounding trucks on pretext of wheat movement ban

LAHORE: The twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi are on the verge of a flour crisis.

Punjab Food Department officials are impounding wheat trucks bound to Rawalpindi and Islamabad in various cities of the province under the pretext of a ban on the movement of wheat.

Deputy Director of Food Department of Rawalpindi division has written a letter on behalf of the commissioners of the twin cities to the Punjab Food director in which he requested for the permission to sell wheat from government warehouses to meet the supply shortfall in market.

The letter stated that wheat suppliers to the twin cities were stopped by food controllers unreasonably in different cities of Punjab due to which a serious imbalance between the demand and supply of wheat had occurred.

The letter added that wheat prices have gone up to Rs1,420 maund (40 kg) or Rs35.5 per kilogramme owing to which the flour mills have hiked retail prices. The ex-mill price of a 20 kg flour bag has increased to Rs810 or Rs40.5 which is likely to rise further until it reaches the retailers.

The letter added that commissioners of twin cities had expressed their concern over the situation and emphasised to resolve this issue.

It said that the government should start selling 20 flour bags per ruler body daily to flour mills of the twin cities in order to avert emerging crisis.

Capacity of flour mills to grind wheat is calculated in the number of rulers it has in the grinding unit. As such mills will be allocated government wheat according to number of ruler bodies the grinding units have.

According to the information received by The Express Tribune, on directions of Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar, the chief secretary had started monitoring the purchase campaign himself as the measures of secretary food went successful.

He issued new directions to all commissioners regarding wheat purchasing in the previous days.

Check-posts have been formed on border areas of Punjab to stop wheat exit from the province while the flour mills in the province are being strictly examined for their purchasing and movement of wheat.

The government, launching a crackdown against wholesalers in the markets, pushed out the traders and lifted some 1.7 million tonnes of wheat until yesterday while it collectively supplied sacks to farmers to hold equivalent of 2.8 million tonnes of wheat.

According to the official information, the government approved 773,000 applications but only 251,000 farmers received sacks yet.

The market sources said that the food department would purchase another three million tonnes to add in its already present stock of 1.5 million tonnes.

Though this would counter a forthcoming crisis the food department would still remain unable to fulfil the wheat demand of flour mills.

The flour mills purchased 5.5 million tonnes wheat from the food department last year.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2019.