The government has tasked the Pakistan Rangers and Frontier Corps (FC) to check wheat and wheat-flour smuggling to neighbouring countries and FC confiscated 764,092 kg of flour in one day, said Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema (Retd).
At his weekly media briefing on Tuesday, he said that smuggling is one of the major reasons contributing to shortage of wheat and flour in the country for which Rangers and Frontier Corps have been tasked to check smuggling of wheat and flour to Afghanistan.
Rangers and Frontier Corps have established check-posts on numerous smuggling routes. He said the government hoped these anti-smuggling measures would help alleviate the shortage of wheat and flour in the country. A senior government official, when contacted, said that the government was not satisfied with the performance of customs for curbing the wheat smuggling.
He said according to some estimates, the whereabouts of some two million tonnes of wheat, locally procured, are not known. This huge quantity remained unavailable to the flour mills. The release of wheat to mills has been fluctuating in the past three months or so, he added. The wheat shortage is affecting flour prices.
There were some differences among the food ministry and customs authorities, according to the official. The food ministry is of the view that massive smuggling of wheat and wheat-flour is the main reason behind the current crisis. The customs authorities, on the other hand, have strongly dispelled the impression of massive smuggling of wheat and flour saying that hoarding is the main factor behind the wheat and flour crisis.
The official said that due to these differences the government tasked the Pakistan Rangers and FC to stop the smuggling of wheat and flour. The step is believed to curb the smuggling in an efficient way.
According to some earlier reports, Punjab used to supply about 2,000 tonnes of flour daily to Balochistan, but the demand had now increased to 4,000 tonnes, which had alarmed the Punjab government. These reports suggest that 1.5 million tonnes of wheat have been smuggled out of Pakistan till the end of September. Wheat smuggling was going on through almost all borders - Wagah, Sindh and Balochistan - in addition to normal and legal exports to Afghanistan.
The smuggling was going in such a big way that the government had to take extraordinary steps. The customs are thought to be insufficient to stop wheat and flour smuggling as the price in the international market is much higher than that is available in the local market.