ISLAMABAD, Jan 9: President Pervez Musharraf will soon convene a meeting to work out effective measures for overcoming the grave shortage of flour, gas and electricity across the country.

A spokesman for the president, Rashid Qureshi, told Dawn that the meeting would discuss the short- and medium-term measures needed to be taken to deal with the acute flour shortage and power and gas shortfall in the long run.

The measures to be discussed include a clampdown on hoarders and improvement in supply of flour, particularly in the NWFP and Balochistan. The issue of subsidy would also be taken up, he said.

An official of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) said that 31,000 tons of wheat was being supplied daily to mills across the country to meet the growing demand, but despite this the price was steadily rising, reaching Rs26 in some parts of the country.

The official said that people were not getting flour because some ‘hidden forces’ were creating an artificial shortage.

Consumers were not getting flour bags from Utility Store Corporation’s outlets as loaded trucks have been seen being sold to profiteers before reaching these outlets.

Sources said that some organised gangs of hoarders were creating artificial shortage in the country. The government has already decided to import 1.5 tons of wheat. Of these, 0.6 million tons has already been imported.

The sources accused some influential people in Punjab of being involved in the hoarding to get maximum benefits from the crisis and to use the money in electioneering.

A list of hoarders, mostly from Punjab, compiled by intelligence agencies a few months ago was lying with the Secretary of Minfal, Mr Ziaur Rehman, but he was not sharing it with other ministries, the sources said.

The sources also alleged that the government was hesitant about launching a crackdown on individuals, fearing that it might create problems for some people of the former ruling party in the general election.

Constitutionally, the Punjab government cannot impose a ban on inter-provincial movement of wheat, but unofficially the supply of wheat and flour to other provinces, particularly to NWFP, was halted recently, thus aggravating the situation there.

The sources said that although the federal government had imposed a 35 per cent regulatory duty on wheat export, the decision was taken very late as the NWFP and Balochistan had almost disposed of their stocks by exporting the commodity to Afghanistan.

On other hand, the Punjab government was demanding subsidy from Sindh and the NWFP on allocated stocks lying with Pasco. Around 75,000 tons of wheat of the NWFP and 0.15 million tons of Sindh are lying with Pasco mainly due to the subsidy issue.

The Punjab government, according to these sources, was claiming that it had allocated Rs3 billion as subsidy for wheat and it could not pass on the benefit to other provinces which had already done away with the system.

The sources said that wheat supply to mills had remained much behind the actual requirement, particularly in the NWFP and Sindh. The daily requirement of Sindh stood at 8,000 tons, while only 4,000 tons of wheat has been released to the mills. In the NWFP, 1,500 tons of wheat has been released as against the demand of 6,000 tons. On the other hand, the Punjab government is claiming to have been releasing 19,000 tons daily as against the demand of 11,000 tons.

The loadshedding has also affected the grinding of wheat in many parts of the country and most of the mills are not fully utilising their capacity due to frequent power failures.

Statistics show that Pakistan exported 502,096 metric tons of wheat in the year 2006-07 to Afghanistan as against 470,614 metric tons in the previous year. The export of wheat to Afghanistan was 521,718 metric tons in the year 2004-05.

An official in the commerce ministry said the export figures for the current fiscal year had yet to be compiled but the trend showed that more than 20 per cent growth in export of wheat was recorded this year. He said the smuggling of wheat to Afghanistan had begun after the imposition of regulatory duty. He said there was no question of smuggling as officially the export to Afghanistan was not banned.