Punjab's aggressive wheat policy riles up mill owners

Food dept allows mills to store wheat for 72 hours

LAHORE: While flour mills have increased the prices of their product due to non-availability of wheat at official rates, the food department has adopted an aggressive strategy to meet the procurement target.

However, the Flour Mills Association has announced a strike in Punjab against raids on mills by the Food Department.

Pakistan Flour Mills Association’s Central Chairperson Asim Raza, while talking to The Express Tribune, said that the staff of food department is harassing the owners and conducting raids on mills.

The department has allowed mills to store wheat for 72 hours of threshing but they do not even have wheat for 48 hours of threshing. Despite this, the district administration and food department officials are raiding the mills and picking up wheat.

He maintained that the officers of the food department are unnecessarily harassing the owners of flour mills to achieve their target.

He also said that wheat purchased from other parts of the province is not being allowed to reach Lahore. Raza said raids were carried out on flour mills in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sargodha, Gujrat and other areas and cases were being registered against the owners.

He alleged that after entering a mills in Sargodha, officials had asked the management to buy 50,000 sacks of wheat. Similarly, vehicles carrying wheat were being seized at the gates of mills in DG Khan. All the mills in Sargodha have been closed for the last three days.

Raza said flour mills in Sindh were buying wheat freely and also storing it, but those in Punjab were not allowed to buy wheat.

He said the provincial food department was trying to achieve its target by harassing mill owners, which was not possible. He said the owners had decided to close the mills in Punjab.

The mills have increased flour prices by up to Rs2 per kilogramme. The price of a 20kg bag of flour has gone up from Rs805 to Rs825 and that of a 10kg bag from Rs400 to Rs420.

Punjab Flour Mills Association Chairperson Abdul Rauf Mukhtar, while talking to The Express Tribune, said that per maund price of wheat in the open market had increased by more than Rs100.

The government is not releasing wheat and owners are buying wheat from the open market. At present, the per maund price of wheat in the markets is about Rs1,500.

He said flour mills are buying expensive wheat and providing cheap flour to the people. Therefore, an increase in prices was inevitable.

According to sources, the Punjab Food Department had set a target of purchasing 4.5 million metric tonnes of wheat but so far only 3.5 million tonnes has been procured.

Thus, the food department is facing a shortfall of one million tonnes in the procurement. The procurement of wheat is to be completed by the first week of June. The procurement season is coming to an end but the food department does not have time to meet the target due to the coming Eidul Fitr holidays.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2020.