Islamabad, October 06, 2022 (PPI-OT):Former President of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) Dr. Shahid Rasheed Butt on Thursday said politics and experiments have disturbed the wheat sector critical for food security. Flawed policies have increased prices, stockpiling, and smuggling of wheat causing the people to suffer from inflation, he said. Shahid Rasheed Butt said that wheat prices and anxiety in the market are continuously increasing due to delays in imports.
In a statement issued here today, he said that certain policies of the central and provincial governments have greatly damaged the wheat market and this process continues, while the influence of the mafia continues to increase, which leads to public suffering. Sindh recently increased the purchase price of forty kilograms of wheat from Rs2200 to Rs4000 forcing Punjab to increase the price from 2200 to 3000 rupees.
Now both provinces ate not agreeing on a uniform wheat support price despite the intervention of the central government, he informed. Apart from the loss of several hundred billion rupees to agriculture, the flood has also washed away the wheat stock of five lakh farmers putting pressure on the existing stocks. In these circumstances, it was decided to import three million tonnes of wheat, but only eleven lakh tonnes could be imported, which is increasing the pressure on the prices and the private sector has found an opportunity to profit from uncertainty, he informed.
There is nothing more basic than the demand for roti which is not only a staple, it is a necessary requirement. Government must make sure that they have ample crops or imports to satisfy the needs of their people to save them from starvation of price shocks, he maintained. The business leader said that huge loans are needed to save the economy and billions of dollars are also needed to protect the country from future extreme weather impacts.
For more information, contact:
Dr. Shahid Rasheed Butt
Consul General Ghana
Former President ICCI
Former Patron ICST
Tel: +92-333-5132199, +92-51-2822571