Hike in flour prices leaves K-P in distress

Twenty-kilogramme bag now retails at Rs770, highest in the country .

PESHAWAR: The price of a 20-kilogramme flour bag shot up by Rs70 this week on the New Rampura wholesale market from Rs650 per bag to Rs720 per bag, said president of Food Grain Dealer and Merchants Association Haji Rambel while talking to The Express Tribune. Retail prices hovered above Rs770 per 20-kg bag for the general public.

He identified the reason behind the sudden hike by saying that the prices went up due to unavailability of wheat in Punjab’s open market. Rambel said that the Punjab Food Department was engaged in large-scale wheat buying and that was the supply was restricted in the open market.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) is fully dependent on Punjab for supply of flour as there are very few mills in the province and they engage in exports to Afghanistan only.

Mills based in Punjab are forced to buy wheat from the open market to cater K-P’s requirement and as they fetch the flour at higher prices, citizens of K-P are also forced to pay a much higher price than anywhere in the country.

Another dealer Haji Liaqat also said that prices had went up by Rs70 per 20-kg bag. Though, he believed that once the buying rush was over, prices will correct themselves back to Rs660.

K-P abandoned subsidy on wheat almost a decade ago and since then, flour prices have been highest in K-P compared to any province in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2013.

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