ISLAMABAD: Wheat flour and sugar prices have continued witnessing upward trend despite arrival of three imported wheat shipments in the country and government's efforts to bring imported sugar to bridge the demand/supply gap.
According to the wholesale traders of wheat flour and sugar, the prices of both the commodities Tuesday went up from Rs900 per 15kg to Rs930 per 15kg, and Rs4,400 per 40kg to Rs4,600 per 40kg.
Traders blamed the government's flawed policies for the raising of prices of sugar and wheat flour, saying that over the past two cropping years, Pakistan did not achieve sugarcane and wheat production target of 69.8 million tons and 27 million tons respectively.
Mohammad Shafiq Abbasi, a wholesaler, said that the government failed to take timely steps for imports of the sugar and wheat. He said that if within the next two months appropriate steps were not taken, the wheat flour price was likely to touch Rs90 per kg mark, and sugar price had already crossed Rs100 per kg level in the retail market.
According to officials of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, sugarcane production in the 2019-2020 decreased to 64.77 million tons from 67.17 million tons the year before showing a decrease of 3.8 percent. The reason behind the decrease in production and area of sugarcane in 2019-2020 is attributable to an increase in area and production of rice and maize, said the official.
The Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) had fixed wheat crop production at 27.03 million tons from an area of 9.2 million hectares during Rabi 2019-2020 but the country only produced a little over 25 million tons of the most important staple grain.
Following the reduction in wheat production and sugarcane production, the government initiated a process to allow 0.3 million tons of refined sugar and 2.5 million tons of wheat.
According to officials, the public sector organisation responsible for procuring wheat during the 2019-2020 season have miserably failed to procure required quantity of the wheat as a result, the country is to face serious crisis.
They said that the Sindh Food Department procured zero ton of wheat against set target of one million ton, and Punjab procured 3.315 million tons against the target of four million tons.
The federal effort was led by the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (Passco), and it procured 0.679 tons of wheat against a target of 1.1 million tons.
Pakistan's Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet on June 22 gave approval to the private sector to import 2.5 million tons of wheat to control prices in the domestic market.
The ECC also decided not to restrict the import of wheat to any limit by the private sector, and to monitor the situation on a monthly basis to ensure availability of wheat and flour in all parts of the country at a reasonable price.
Officials said that traders had booked 600,000 tons of wheat at an average price of $235 per ton but Ukrainian wheat is not available after its price shot up to $250 per ton, triggered by rising buying activity from Indonesia and Egypt.
Similarly, sugar prices have also gone up in the global market. Three ships carrying around 200,000 tons of imported wheat from Ukraine have arrived in Karachi during the past two weeks, and the commodity will be supplied to various flour mills of the country especially to Karachi and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, to bring down the increased wheat flour prices.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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