Wheat Development Commissioner in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MinFA), Dr. Shakeel Ahmad Khan told APP on Thursday that despite floods Pakistan has sufficient strategic food reserves, including wheat, rice, maize and pulses to fulfill its domestic requirements.
While commenting on the UN report on food price hike in the country, he said that internationally the commodity market were bearing the upward trend in food prices due to increase in petroleum prices.
"It was a natural phenomena that hike in PoL prices in international market led the cause of price rising of food commodities in domestic price due to increase in cost of production and transportation", he added.
Inflation was the main reason for price sparking in the country besides, the increasing value of dollar against rupee was also the reason, he added.
The prices of food commodities including vegetables and pulses were still at the lowest level as compare to the regional countries like, India, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, he remarked.
He said that government has also initiated safety nets like Benazir Income Supports Programme to protect the poor from inflation and over Rawest. 74 billion have been disbursed to the poor beneficiaries under social safety net.
A scheme of soft loans, of up to 300,000 rupees for setting up of small businesses, has been launched.
The BISP has provided relief to over 4 million poor families, including IDPs, flood victims and the victims of bomb blasts.
The Wheat Commissioner said that Pakistan was producing the exportable surplus including wheat, rice, maize and other minor crops like pluses vegetable and fruits on a reasonable prices.
He said that despite challenging conditions due to flash floods in the country bumper wheat crop is expected where as sugarcane production has also registered an considerable increase.