PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter of Pakistan Flour Mills Association has warned of a likely wheat flour shortage in the province because of declining supplies of wheat to local flour mills.The association’s provincial chief, in a press release issued on Monday, has invited the federal minister of national food security’s attention declining wheat supplies to flour mills in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Mohammad Anees, the association’s provincial chief, asked the federal authorities to arrange 200,000 metric tons wheat supplies to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa flour mills from the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation’s warehouses in Punjab.
He said the province had traditionally been a wheat deficient federating unit and it relied heavily on supplies of wheat and wheat flour from Punjab. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa flour mills, he added, had been procuring wheat from the open market to produce flour.
However, the growing shortage of wheat in the local open market, he added, had caused problems for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa millers, exposing them to vulnerabilities. Flourmills in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said, were facing a growing crisis. As a result, he added, people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were constrained to buy wheat flour at prices higher than prevalent in Punjab’s markets.
“Since Passco has reasonable wheat stocks in its warehouses, the directives should be issued to provide wheat to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa flourmills from its (Passco’s) godowns in Punjab on ex-warehouse rates in line with the past precedents,” Mr Anees was quoted as saying in the press release.
He said the decision would stabilise prices of wheat flour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa markets.
He said the crisis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa developed after the provincial food department provided only 25 per cent of the wheat flour quota against which, he added, was not sufficient to meet wheat consumption requirement of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He held the last caretaker government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa responsible for the current crisis faced by local flourmills.
He said the caretaker government did not procure wheat in time as a result of which, according to him, the incumbent provincial government had to pay Rs4 billion in subsidy on wheat, causing financial problems.
