National Assembly's Standing Committee on Commerce on Thursday raised eyebrows over alleged corruption in Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) and violation of PPRA Rules. The committee which met under the Chairmanship of Engineer Khurram Dastgir sought assurance from the government to 'manoeuvre free' supply of essential commodities.
The committee also raised a number of questions over transparency of contracts being given to pre-shipment companies, timely import of urea and supply of sugar. The committee maintained that Pakistan was an agriculture country producing sugarcane yet the price of farm commodities as well as sugar are too high and not uniform throughout Pakistan.
The committee expressed serious concern over hoarding and high prices of sugar, urea and rice and repeatedly raised the query: if, as TCP maintains, there is no shortage of sugar then why is the price rising?
The committee criticised the massive amount of subsidy extended by the government to rice, urea, sugar and other commodities with no benefit/relief filtering to the common men. Instead it noted that scandals associated with delays in imports, kickbacks, embezzlements and misappropriations frequently appear in the media. PPRA rules are also not followed in letter and spirit, the committee noted.
Fearing that the 2009 sugar problem may resurface this year, the committee recommended to Ministry of Commerce/ Chairman TCP to promptly complete the codal formalities in a transparent way. Last year, Chairman TCP, Anjum Bashir, had been accused of close ties with those sugar importers who failed to perform and the country faced billions of rupees of loss by importing costlier sugar. In his defence the Chairman had denied these charges arguing that both the parties were pre-qualified bidders.
The federal government has already ousted TCP from sugar import business spearheaded by Deputy Chairman Planning Commission, Dr Nadeem-ul-Haq who according to insiders in the Planning Commission acted on the Finance Minister's advice.
The committee also discussed in detail the quality of powdered sugar, with little sweetness, and imported sugar often not made from sugarcane. The TCP disagreed and maintained that imported sugar is of higher quality as it is refined sugar. The polarisation (sweetness or imported refined sugar is 99.8% which is a degree higher compared to whole sugar of 99.7%). Similarly, granule size, icumsa of imported refined sugar is 45 compared to locally produced sugar of 80-100 icumsa .
The committee noted that cabinet decides when to import and this decision is made when there is an acute shortage of a commodity in the country leaving no time to complete the codal formalities like tenders, placement of orders, negotiations and shipment etc. Therefore, an efficient mechanism should be established.
As far as price is concerned the Ministry of Industries/ NFML and Ministry of Food and Agriculture will also be called to clarify their position, the committee said. The committee also recommended to the Establishment Division to regularise the services of employees of Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) so that transparency and merit was observed. Ministry of Commerce, Chairman TCP will send consolidated proposal to the Establishment Division.
Talking to Business Recorder, Chairman of standing committee said that the committee raised some questions: why there is a supply crisis in commodities every year? And why is the government not taking concrete measures to deal with these crises? "We want an assurance from the government that commodity crisis does not appear again in future," he added. Mrs Yasmeen Rehman, Chaudhry Iftikhar Nazir, Noman Islam Sheikh, Liaqat Ali Khan, Mrs Tahira Aurangzeb, Haji Muhammad Akram Ansari, Mrs Shireen Arshad Khan, Iqbal Muhammad Ali Khan and Jamila Gilani attended the meeting.
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