Several mills and chakkies closed down

KARACHI - The profit mafia has hoarded wheat worth billion of rupees in the country as provincial food departments as well as PASCO are facing obstacles in purchasing the commodity due to low official support price that may lead to another crisis of wheat.

According to stakeholders, more than half of 70 flour mills and 90pc 'Chakies' have been closed in Karachi owing to non-availability of wheat and government's strict policy of not allowing mills to procure wheat from interior Sindh. The hoarders' mafia has procured major stocks of wheat from the growers in Punjab and Sindh through their middlemen which, resulting in difficulties for achieving the target of wheat procurement of 6m tons.

The food department of Sindh government had procured 0.470 million tons wheat against target of 0.6 million tons by Tuesday while during same period of previous year the total procurement was at 0.561m tons.