Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has directed federal and provincial governments to take every necessary step, including increasing market supply, to bring rising wheat prices under control. He issued the instruction on Saturday while chairing a cabinet committee meeting on the stocks, prices and supply of essential commodities.
Dar said safeguarding national food security and keeping essential goods available at reasonable prices were government priorities, and told all agencies to monitor markets closely and show zero tolerance for hoarding and speculation.
The committee was told that stocks of essential commodities were adequate and that domestic and imported wheat reserves were enough to last until the next harvest. Sugar, it was briefed, was selling well below the targeted retail price of Rs155 per kg, with surplus stocks available until the next crushing season.
The meeting was attended by Food Security Minister Rana Tanveer Hussain, Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik, Special Assistant Tariq Bajwa, the chief secretaries of all provinces and senior federal and provincial officials.
The directive follows Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's decision a day earlier to set the 2027 wheat support price at Rs4,500 per maund, Rs1,000 higher than last year. The PTI Kisan Wing welcomed the move, but its central information secretary Khalid Nawaz Sadhraich said the real test would be implementation, warning that without an effective procurement system farmers have in past seasons been forced to sell to middlemen at throwaway prices.