ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will import 200,000 tons of sugar from India, Turkey and Brazil in order to tide over the coming thin period before the next crushing season, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Com- mission Qazi Aleemullah said. The Trading Corporation of Pakistan had been directed to import sugar from where ever it could be obtained at the cheapest possible rate. Two ship- loads have already arrived, said Qazi Aleemullah, who is also Chairman of the Kitchen Crops Committee. As a result of this measure, he was confident, the sugar industrialists would not able to raise the sugar price on the basis of any scarcity of the essential foodstuff.
Besides, the Utility Stores Corporation! had been directed to provide ten bags of sugar to genuine shopkeepers in Mohallas for sale to the general public. Asked about the report that the Corporation had started selling sugar to wholesalers, Qazi stated that he had forbid- den any sales to the wholesalers after reading report in the newspapers to this effect. Asked about the supply situation of potato, the Planning Commission chief denied the impression that the crop had been dam- aged by heavy rains. In fact, the middlemen had hoarded potato in cold storage in anticipation of such damage, and they were releasing potato in small quantities at high rates. thus indulging in profiteering, he said.
The government had decided to import potato from abroad in order to obviate any artificial shortage and profiteering by the unscrupulous elements, he stated. He further disclosed that the Ministry of Food & Agriculture had been directed to submit a scheme for reforming the agricultural marketing that would effectively combat the middleman’s machinations that deprives the farmers of his due price, while at the same time fleecing the consumer. The problem could be solved not by overt coercion but through well considered appropriate inter- vention by the Government, he further disclosed that the Ministry stressed.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 31, 1996
