Says, KP has sufficient stock of wheat
PESHAWAR
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Food, Sports, Science and Technology Atif Khan has said that there is no shortage of wheat in the province, saying the provincial government discounted flour supply would not be disrupted at any cost.
“We have sufficient stocks of wheat at present. In KP a bag of 20kg flour is available in the open market for Rs1300 as the provincial government has been giving billions of rupees in subsidies on it,” Atif Khan said while speaking at a press conference on Tuesday.
Secretary Food, Mushtaq Ahmed and Director Food were also present on this occasion.
Atif maintained that there was no question of flour crises as the government has increased the quota of subsidised wheat from 5,000 metric tonnes to 6,500 to meet the millers demands.
The annual wheat requirement of the province is about 5 million metric tons. 1.3 million metric tons is the province’s own production, while 1.2million metric tons is bought from Punjab, adding that 2.5 million tons of wheat and flour comes to the province through the private sector. Atif Khan said that KP government fulfills 50% of the requirement of wheat and flour by itself and 50% from outside, wheat stock is released from one purchasing season to another according to the procedure.
He said that in order to provide relief to the people of the province, the provincial government provided government cheap discount flour.
We have put in place a comprehensive monitoring system and provided an app to dealers for transparent distribution of flour at the official rate, Atif Khan said that the problem of flour rate in the market at the moment is inflation.
In the last few months, the rate of everything has increased by 30%, Atif Khan added that due to the increase in the dollar rate, electricity, Ghee, gas transportation has become expensive.
Explaining the video of the trucks, he said that the trucks seen in the video contain World Food Program wheat, not our wheat, which is being exported to Afghanistan.
He said that the provincial government has decided the wheat will not be exported to Afghanistan.
“Propaganda against the provincial government is unjustified and no one will benefit from it,” Atif Khan added and criticized the federal government for creating a food crisis across the country.
He said that people reeling under the unprecedented inflation and prices of all essential commodities are skyrocketing each passing day but PDM leadership has observed pin drop silence.
