The Punjab government will extend wheat quota from 12,500 to 14,000 tons to flourmills by mid November, well placed source told Business Recorder, here on Saturday. Sources said that Sindh had already increased its wheat quota issued to flourmills by 80 percent. "Sindh has increased wheat quota from 4,500 to 8,000 tones," sources added.
They said the NWFP government has decided to increase its wheat quota to flourmills from today (Saturday). "NWFP has increased wheat quota by 50 percent, increasing the release from 2,000 to 4,000 tons per day," they said. They further said that Punjab flourmills have decided to send 30,000 bags of flour to quake-hit areas of Balochistan.
Punjab is already sending 5,000 tons wheat to NWFP and 1000 tons to Balochistan per day. According to source, there are 170 flourmills in Islamabad but due to high international prices of wheat, most of the commodity is being smuggled to Afghanistan through NWFP.
Preoccupied with high inflation, the residents of the federal capital have no access to flour as wheat bags have disappeared from the markets. Sources said that Islamabad is facing shortage of 11,000 flour bags per day and trying to overcome this shortage by requesting the Punjab government to increase flour quota for federal capital.
"Islamabad's population is 1.4 million which is currently obtaining 14,000 flour bags per day and the total demand is at least 25,000 bags. There is definitely a shortfall but every possible effort is being made to overcome this shortage and the Punjab government has been requested to increase the supply to the capital," sources said.