Wheat and sugar scams have haunted Pakistan for decades

LAHORE: Wheat and sugar scandals have been haunting the country for decades, media has been raising hue and cry, masses have been wailing and protesting, inquiries have been taking place, few heads have rolled over the years, but authorities at the helm of affairs have neither succeeded in recovering the allegedly looted bounties from those who have been pocketing massive windfalls, nor have they been able to arrest the result price spiral of these daily-use essential kitchen commodities.

Various inquiries over the years have blamed the flour and sugar cartels monopolizing the trade of these two essential commodities for hoarding and price manipulation, but consumers have remained the ultimate losers. Prices have surged and have long been beyond a commoner’s reach.

It is estimated that while 22 million tons of wheat is consumed in Pakistan annually, sugar consumption rests at 6.3 million tonnes and going up.

On April 21, 2020, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had announced it would probe all aspects of the wheat and sugar scandals in the country at that time.

The crisis had surfaced around mid-January 2020 when the Flour Mills Association raised the wheat flour price by Rs6 per kg to rest at around Rs70 per kg. This marked an increase of Rs20 per kg since the inception of the Imran Khan-led PTI government.

Earlier, on April 4, two Federal Investigation Agency reports revealed PTI’s bigwig Jahangir Tareen, Khusro Bakhtiar, PML-Q’s Monis Elahi and their relatives were involved in the scam and benefiting from export subsidies at a time when the commodity was short in the country.

On April 6, the federal minister for National Food Security, Khusro Bakhtiar — who was also named as a beneficiary in the FIA reports — was removed from his position. Meanwhile, secretary National Food Security, Hashim Popalzai, was also replaced.

The FIA reports were made public on the directives of premier Imran Khan, who, according to Special Assistant on Accountability Mirza Shahzad Akbar, had ordered stern action against those found involved in the crises “irrespective of their status and party affiliation.”

Reports from the same day also suggested Tareen was removed from his position as the chairman of the country’s Agriculture Task Force, but he denied this, saying he was never appointed to any position in the first place.

Punjab Food Minister Sami Ullah Chaudhry also tendered his resignation over his alleged inaction on carrying out reforms in the provincial food department.

Commissioner Dera Ghazi Khan, Nasim Sadiq, and former Director Food, Zafar Iqbal, were also relieved from their duties.

By the way, NAB is currently investigating into wheat theft worth billions in Sindh, following reports that almost 47,000 sacks of the commodity, worth at least Rs800 million, had gone missing from the government warehouse in Khairpur.

In 2022, thousands of metric tons of wheat vanished from Sindh government warehouses in Naushehro Feroze, and in September 2019, it was revealed during a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet that of the 0.8 million tonnes of this commodity stocked by the Sindh government, 0.3 million tonnes had been devoured by rats!!

And now in May 2024, media is reporting that from August 2023 to March 2024, wheat worth Rs330 billion was imported by the Caretaker set-up, of which 1.3 million tonnes of grain was found unfit for human consumption due to fungus.

According to reports flashing on television screens, the Anwaarul Haq Kakar-led caretaker government had imported 2.8 million tonnes of wheat for Rs250 billion, and during the incumbent PMLN regime, 700,000 tonnes of wheat worth Rs80 billion has reached the country. Overall $1.1 billion flew out of Pakistan for the import of the commodity.

In August 2007, in a report it presented before the Supreme Court recently, the NAB had lent credence to rumours that blamed leading politicians for the sugar crisis of 2004-06.

NAB had named almost all top political payers in the country for hoarding as much as 316,690 metric tons of sugar, pushing its price up from Rs21 to Rs45 per kg.

In September 2009, according to a “Reuters” news agency report, sugar output had fallen to an estimated 3.2 million tonnes as compared with 4.7 million tonnes the previous year, partly because farmers had switched to other crops.

Sugar process had been rising sharply in recent weeks and the government opted to deflect criticism and boost supplies by importing sugar and cracking down on hoarders and millers, whom it had accused of holding back stocks.

The Lahore High Court had then ordered traders to ensure a retail price of 40 rupees/kg, compared to a market price of Rs46 to Rs55 per kg.

The state-owned Trading Corporation of Pakistan had issued a tender to import 25,000 tonnes of white sugar. In a tender that closed on August 29, 2009, Pakistan had thus bought 75,000 tonnes.

In 2009, Pakistan was Asia’s third-largest wheat producer and is expecting a crop of about 24 million tonnes this year, which was two million tonnes above the domestic requirement. In order to help exporters, the government had removed a 35 percent duty on exports of wheat products. On the wheat front, despite the bumper crop, people were seen standing in queues for hours outside state-run discount shops, where a 20-kg bag of relatively low-quality flour was costing Rs200 some 15 years ago. It was reported that sufficient wheat was available in storage to meet demand, but the inability of the government to bring it to the market had led to the crisis.

In 2013, during Nawaz Sharif’s government, there was again a lot of uproar about a wheat scam, but public protests had fallen on deaf ears. In December of the same year, an accountability court had acquitted three officials of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Department in a case wherein around 3,319 metric tons of wheat was allegedly misappropriated during transportation from Dera Ismail Khan to Peshawar.