Another wheat crisis

Having faced a serious wheat crisis last year, Pakistan could face another one this year. The cause of the impending crisis given by the government is that the country may not be able to achieve the fixed wheat target of around 24 million tonnes. Pakistan is facing flour crisis despite having bumper wheat crop of 23.30 million tonnes. The Federal Committee on Agriculture last year fixed the wheat production target at 24.0 million tonnes. Some government officials shifted the blame to power outages and high prices of fertilizers for not achieving the wheat production target. It was estimated that 18.5 million tonnes wheat production was expected from Punjab, 3.2 million tonnes from Sindh, 1.5 million tonnes from NWFP and 0.8 million tonnes from Balochistan. The overall wheat stock position as on January 27, 2008, was 1.455 million tonnes out of which the province wise position was: Punjab 1.029 million tonnes, Sindh 0.167 million tonnes, NWFP 0.069 million tonnes, Balochistan 0.042 million tonnes and PASSCO 0.147 million tonnes. The overall wheat exports (2007-08) stand at 500 thousand tonnes.

The flour crisis last year caused unrest among the masses. Long queues of people were seen at utility stores and flour mills waiting for hours in the hope of getting flour. The tragedy is that people blamed the government for the crisis, which in turn accuses hoarders and profiteers for the shortage and spiralling prices. The question is then who is responsible for this basic necessity item crisis? The Federal Food Committee (FFC) decided to involve law-enforcing agencies in order to avert riots. Over 6,000 personnel of Frontier Constabulary and Rangers were deployed at mills, stores and routes to ensure smooth supply of flour to markets. Rangers and FC personnel escorted the wheat supply from stores to mills and from mills to distribution points and markets, monitoring daily production of flour at mills according to their quota, and checking illegal movement of the commodity. Another major obstacle in the implementation of FFC authority is its refusal and inability to take action against wheat hoarders' list provided to it by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC). The solution of this crisis is a question mark.