Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) Punjab has expressed its inability to ensure full supply of flour in Sunday Bazaars of the city tomorrow and has informed the Food Department in writing in this regard. 'We hope that we can only supply 50 percent of the required flour in Sunday Bazaars of the city,' said PFMA-Punjab Chairman, Habib-ur-Rehman Leghari while talking to Business Recorder here on Saturday.
He claimed that their member mills were short of wheat while electricity load-shedding was also causing lot of trouble for grinding of available wheat. He said that they were reviewing the situation and hope that they could only provide 50 percent of the requirement on this Sunday.
He said that they were not ready to lift quota of wheat offered by the Punjab Food Department at Rs 560 per maund. He said that at this rate only wheat costs to mills at Rs 280 per 20 kilograms and how could they give flour at Rs 290 per 20 kilogram bags.
He said that the food department was offering only Rs 10 per bag margin, which is not feasible and they wanted at least Rs 60 margin per bag or the government should give them wheat at Rs 480 per maund. He also said that they wanted that the government should issue wheat quota on equal basis to whole of the province instead of their issuing wheat quota on population basis. He said that according to the formula of the food department each mill get 11 bags per body and it would make unfeasible to work for the small mills.
Leghari also criticised the food department for withdrawing the permits to send flour to the NWFP and other provinces. Meanwhile, it has been learnt that some 30 mills in the Lahore region which covers Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur and Okara have started lifting their quota under the new formula of the food department.
Sources in the department said that how much these mills have lifted in last three days is yet to be calculated and the situation will be cleared by Sunday morning. While they also claimed that on the whole 350 mills were lifting the quota across the Punjab province.