Disarray on the wheat front

Incredible under normal circumstances would have been the abrupt increase in the price of wheat on Karachi grain market during the week's opening session on Monday. For it depicted an almost overnight jump of Rs 100 to Rs 2400 per 100-kg, with no trading, as usual, on Sunday.
The rising trend in wheat prices in the country, attributable as it has remained to scarcity of the grain because of a severe and largely un-addressed shortfall in production this year. So much so that fears of emergence of a famine-like situation had started haunting people simultaneously with harvesting of the new crop.
The efforts initiated to meet the impending crisis failed to yield desired results for one reason or the other. For one, reference may be made to a lack of comprehension, on the part of concerned government departments, of the grim consequences of the low size of the acreage sown, to begin with. That was, essentially, the time to start bracing for the worrisome eventuality with due focus on imports to supplement domestic supplies.
This is, however, not to say either that no efforts in that direction were made, as the Trading Corporation of Pakistan was reported to be floating international tenders, seemingly, to ensure against more difficulties, but without ever leading to any comforting end.
In the meanwhile, domestic distribution of available supplies remained dotted with discordant bearings. Among other things, reference in this context may be made to the upset caused by shortage of wheat as resulting from the official ban on its inter-provincial transportation, particularly from Punjab, that was further exacerbated by provincial governments' cut in quota of flourmills too.
More to this, there happens to be the popular perception, also shared by government officials, of heavy smuggling of wheat and flour to Afghanistan. This is besides the official wheat supplies made to that country. Needless to point out, associated with smuggling is also the enabling factor of hoarding and profiteering, hence prompting the government to beat it with strong measures, but without much success.
As against all this, early in June, Prime Minister Gilani had tasked ambassador-designate to Iran, M.B. Abbasi, to lead a special delegation to the United States to canvass support for special consideration to help Pakistan with maximum possible supplies of wheat to meet its food crisis. Not that the mission succeeded as desired, but did raise some hopes in that direction.
Besides being favoured with token emergency supplies, it has brightened prospects of subsequent imports, including PL-480 wheat. This kind of effort will need to be pursued with other friendly countries too. However, what we need doing more is to block the way to smuggling of wheat and flour not only to Afghanistan but also to other destinations.