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The wheat crisis has subsided, but is far from
over
April 29: Thank
goodness the wheat crisis has subsided, with the
owners of Karachi’s flourmills calling off the
strike they had begun on Monday. They did so
following a meeting with Sindh Chief Secretary Dr
Mutawakkil Qazi, who restored the licences of
seven flourmills. The restoration of licenses had
been one of the two main demands of the
protestors.
But the senior-most official of the Sindh
government could not do anything with regard to
the mill owners’ other demand: lifting the ban on
the inter-provincial and inter-district movement
of wheat. The mill owners have been told the issue
would be discussed in the next two days at a
high-level meeting in Islamabad. The chief
secretary may not have been mandated to do
anything in this regard.
The Sindh government had issued notices to 10
flourmills for over-charging and the seven mills
had been sealed as a punitive measure. The
government has reportedly taken these steps to
ensure a steady wheat supply to Karachi despite
the official restriction on its movement. This
restriction is imposed in Sindh to facilitate the
official procurement of 600,000 tonnes of wheat
for strategic reserves.
The wheat shortage hit Karachi just before Ramazan
and developed into a crisis early this year. It
was during Ramazan that the government, in order
to appease disgruntled mill owners, increased
their quotas by 150 percent to prevent them from
causing a flour shortage during the fasting month.
Previous governments had provided Ramazan
subsidies to mill owners. The present government
refrained from this, but then increased the wheat
quota in a self-defeating move.
In the meantime, Punjab and PASSCO supported Sindh
by providing wheat shipments. But those shipments
were not substantial enough. Three shipments from
Australia were not useful as they were
substandard. The situation improved with the
passage of time with wheat procurement from areas
that had early harvests, until the recent
imposition of ban on the movement of wheat by the
Punjab and Sindh governments, a move considered a
violation of the federal government’s policy by
the two provinces.
At present, the wheat issue that has already
pushed up flour prices in Karachi, has acquired a
menacing dimension. It has caused so much
hostility between provinces that the NWFP has
threatened Punjab it would cut off its power
supply if it did not lift the ban on the movement
of wheat.
According to the NWFP food minister, should
Friday’s meeting fail, a group of politicians from
different parties, nazims, councillors, traders,
representatives from civil society organizations,
journalists and concerned citizens would leave for
Punjab aboard 500 trucks within seven days of the
of the meeting to buy wheat from the open market
in Punjab and bring it to the NWFP.
The minister said Punjab businessmen would not be
allowed to use land routes in the NWFP to do
business with Afghanistan and Central Asia if that
province “did not mend its ways”.
“We will turn this national issue into an
international one if the wheat crisis is not
resolved,” he warned. But the NWFP and Balochistan,
particularly the former, have not addressed the
serious concerns of Punjab that there is a
constant outflow of wheat of several thousands
tonnes from NWFP and Balochistan to Afghanistan
every day across the border.
The wheat issue has pitted two provinces against
each other when the issue of the 6th NFC Award
with regard to consensus on it is yet to be
resolved. The Award has become a victim of delay
since March 31 because consensus has so far
alluded the centre and the four provinces on the
federal-provincial ratio in the divisible pool
known as vertical distribution. The present
Punjab-NWFP tiff also reinforces the federal
government’s apprehensions that the vertical issue
was false, and it would be the distribution of
funds among the four provinces that could become
the actual issue.
Daily Times
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Pakissan.com; Advisory Point
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