February 17, 2008	Sunday	Safar 09, 1429

KARACHI, Feb 16: Various varieties of flour have disappeared from markets in the city as people bought the commodity in large quantities on Friday and Saturday as against their normal consumption in view of pre-and-post election scenario, viz-a-viz law and order situation and market closures.

After a bitter experience of paying over Rs300 for a 10kg bag in the violence and closure of markets after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on Dec 27, consumers are virtually doing panic- buying of flour.

However, general secretary of Karachi Retailers Grocers Group (KRGG), Mohammad Farid Qureishi, said he had been receiving reports from his members in various areas that they had run out of flour stocks on Friday and Saturday.

“Flour is not in the shops definitely, but it is lying in abundance in consumer houses,” he said, adding he had individually sold 2,000 bags of 10kg on Saturday as compared to 400-500 bags in normal days.

He said he had no reports that retailers had started charging higher rates as against the actual government rate of Rs150-160 per 10kg bag.

Karachi Wholesalers Grocers Association (KWGA) chairman Anis Majeed said that for the last two days there had been a short supply of atta from mills in the wholesale markets.

He said that shopkeepers were directly lifting flour from the mills.

The former chairman of the, Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA), Sindh Zone, Chaudhry Ansar Jawed, said supply of flour from the mills to the wholesale market had been regular and even to the retailers in the market.

He, however, said that there was virtually no shortage of flour from the mills, but

“actually consumers have become frightened after December 27 incidents and they are now doing panic buying by grabbing flour bags in larger quantities’’.

A consumer, who used to buy two kgs of flour, bought 20kgs and this was creating problems, he said, adding consumers were making mistake in piling up stocks in larger quantities because quality of atta stocks would deteriorate after keeping it for several days.

He said there were big queues of people outside flour mills for the last few days. A mill was now getting 4,760 wheat bags per week from the food department.