Relief package: Govt gears up for Ramazan, announces subsidy of Rs1.3b

Will sell 18 essential food commodities at discounted prices through utility stores

ISLAMABAD:

While retailers are in the final rush to roll out their Ramazan offers, the government has announced its own relief package which will provide Rs4 to Rs50 per kg subsidy on 18 food commodities.

Federal Minister for Industries and Production Ghulam Murtaza Khan Jatoi made the announcement at a press conference here on Thursday.

The relief package worth Rs1.3 billion will provide subsidy on 18 essential food commodities and these will be distributed through the Utility Stores Corporation’s (USC) countrywide network of stores. Jatoi said the government had given Rs4 per kg subsidy on flour, while Rs8 per kg subsidy would be given on ghee and Rs5 per kg on rice basmati and rice sela (broken).

He announced a subsidy of Rs10 on milk, oil, gram pulse, moong pulse, masoor pulse, white gram, gram flour and dates. Subsidy of Rs50 per kg has been announced on black tea, Rs10 per litre on Tetra pack milk and 10% on spices.

The minister said the government had set the sales target of Rs20 billion at utility stores in Ramazan.



“The prices of essential commodities increase each year during this month and the USC has been offering Ramazan relief packages since 1991 to provide relief to the people,” he stated.

He also said the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet each year approves an amount of subsidy in the form of Ramazan package.

The minister said the USC would also reduce prices of more than 1,000 items by 5% to 10% through additional discounts from vendors.

Moreover, the Ramazan relief package will be closely monitored and an amount of Rs10 million will be spent by the USC on awareness campaigns in the print media.

Reassuring the media, the minister said the Ministry of Finance had released Rs1 billion as upfront subsidy and the Ministry of Industries and Production had constituted a monitoring team.

He said he had already requested the industries and production secretary to delegate to the provincial chief secretaries the monitoring of the Ramazan relief package through the district administration and that special teams headed by the senior executive of the corporation would also visit warehouses and stores to monitor the implementation.

Furthermore, he stressed that a separate operation room will be set up at the USC head office in Islamabad to receive complaints about pricing, quality and unavailability and a complaint cell is active and receiving complaints in the USC head office, being directly monitored by the managing director himself. At the press conference, he also warned that cases would be referred to the National Accountability Bureau if anyone was found involved in corruption.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19^th,  2015.

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