LAHORE: The Punjab food department has suspended the official wheat quota of all 1,100 flour mills in the province as prices of grain in the open market begin to rise though the new wheat crop has hit the market.

As per convention the food department has suspended release of official wheat to flour mills in the province with the beginning of harvesting of the new crop.

However, flour millers claimthat deputy commissioners are not issuing them permits for transporting the wheat to their factories they are purchasing from the farmers or open market.

Punjab chapter chairman of the Pakistan Flour Millers Association (PFMA) Chaudhry Iftikhar Mattoo sees flour crisis round the corner as wheat stocks with most of the mills have exhausted and those still grinding wheat don`t have enough supplies to keep their units functional beyond 72 hours.

He tells Dawn that the ban on flour millers to purchase wheat from the open market is giving the negative impression that the province has not produced enough grain this year. This impression, he says, will lead to panic buying and encourageunofficial private players to hoard the crop on one pretext or the other and the grain to be bought by the mills will go to private andundeclared storages creating a shortage in the market.

Mr Mattoo warns that the hoarders will mint money at the cost of flour consumers as mills forced to buy wheat at higher rates from the black market will pass on this hike to the general consumers.

Punjab mills usually procure around two million tonnes of wheat every year.

He says if the government wishes to document all the sale and purchase of wheat crop then it should issue permits to registered market players otherwise the grain purchased by unregistered private parties will remainunaccounted for and thus puzzling the authorities about the actual size of crop and making them to go for wheat imports to cover the `apparent` demand and supply gap.

The food department has unofficially revised its wheat procurement target for the ongoing campaign from 3.8m tonnes to 4.2m tonnesfor the year.Sofarit has procured 1.88m tonnes of grain.

It has distributed gunny bags among over 58,082 farmers.

The department was to buy 3.5m tonnes wheat but as much of the stock from the previous stocks was exhausted due to the free flour scheme this Ramazan, it enhanced its target to 3.8m tonnes and then to 4.2m tonnes for maintaining its carryover stocks.