Sugar price setat Rs165/kg after free-for-all surge
"All provincial governments will ensure the availability of cheap sugar to the public in light of this decision," said a brief statement issued by the ministry.
Last week, the PML-N led federal government approved the import of half a million tonnes of sugar in a bid to maintain affordable prices of the commodity.
"The committee approved the import of up to 500,000 metric tons of sugar to ensure a stable supply and maintain affordable prices nationwide," said a statement posted on X.
In March, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar noted that retail sugar prices should not exceed Rs164 after the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) warned sugar mills against price manipulation.
Dar said that according to news reports, there was a spike in sugar prices to Rs178-179, which, he said, was "obviously not tolerable" to the prime minister.
In Lahore, sugar is currently being sold at arbitrary prices, ranging between Rs190 to Rs210 per kg. Citizens complain that sugar is not available anywhere in the city at the official rate-- Rs180 per kg.
Since last Friday, sugar mills in Sindh and Punjab have halted sugar supply to the markets, said Wholesale Grocers Association Chairman Rauf Ibrahim.
He said with supply suspended for the past four days, only stored sugar is currently being sold in Karachi, causing wholesale prices to rise from Rs178180 to Rs182 per kg and retail prices from Rs190195 to Rs200 per kg.
Ibrahim criticized the government's lack of interest in cracking down on sugar mill owners and hoarders, warning that this negligence is fueling price hikes.
According to sources, a collusion among sugar mill owners is the root cause behind the rising prices. This powerful cartel has historically pressured the government to permit exports under the guise of surplus stock, driving up domestic prices.
Between 2015 and 2020, 2.355 million metric tons of sugar were reportedly exported to Afghanistan. However, Afghan government data confirms only 1.5 million tons were received. 778,000 metric tons were smuggled, with no records found for this volume.
In past years, 26 mills benefitted from billions in subsidies for exporting 400,000 metric tons of sugar. Documents show sugar mills extracted Rs4.12 billion in subsidies up to 2021.
In March, the price was set at Rs140 per kg. After exporting 750,000 tons, it rose to Rs170 per kg. The government then raised the ex-mill price by Rs20, but sugar crossed Rs200/kg in markets. In response, the government decided to import 500,000 tons of sugar.
However, post-2021 IMF conditions banned subsidies on sugar exports. The government is now unable to subsidize the industry or fix minimum sugarcane prices, as the IMF demands complete deregulation of the sugar sector.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Recorder
an hour ago
- Business Recorder
Resetting economic governance
We have lost count of experiments conducted to resolve challenges confronted by our economy. However, except interludes of relative stability, the economy has kept faltering with breathing space provided by IMF bailouts, rollovers by friendly countries and expatriate Pakistanis' remittances. While political disruptions and policy shocks contributed to the snowballing of the economic disorder, civil bureaucracy remained ill-equipped to deal with the decline. On their part, technocrats overtime fell in line with their employers in civil bureaucracy. Surprisingly, despite being the most relevant stakeholder the businessmen were not enabled to take centre stage to play substantive role in economic governance or to sway the policies to economy's favour. The corporate executives have been part of the Cabinet, but they lose their independent voice once they join the ruling club. Their recommendations are not incorporated in a way they would desire in the final decisions, legislations, and policies. Likewise, they are hardly taken on board on economic matters linked to strategic and foreign policy issues. Resultantly, the decisions pertaining to geopolitical dynamics are aligned more with political objectives than long-term economic benefits. An example of this approach is Pakistan's insignificant trade with its neighbouring countries. Issues and controversies that crop up every now and then between businessmen and the government indicate ineffectiveness of former's consultative role as well as their inability to wield real influence in matters having substantial impact on the economy. No wonder policymakers' chronic neglect of corporate sector's policy inputs has exacerbated economic deterioration. The economic governance status quo chose to disregard the counsels of the entrepreneurs, despite the fact that alongside the establishment and civil society businessmen have kept the country afloat in times of peace and national emergencies. As heads of organizations which create wealth, generate employment, deposit mammoth taxes, partner with government in social development and step forward in national upheavals, business leaders have a strong and legitimate right to be embedded into national economic decision-making as strategic partners. The concept of privatisation is premised on private sector's proven ability to better able to govern. This should also hold true in the case of national economic governance as the economy is led by entrepreneurs who should not merely be considered as business managers but as economic sages capable of coming up with viable strategies for economic recovery and tweaking these modalities all the way in their successful implementation. The economies flourish when they function as enterprise and who could be more suitable to run them in this manner than the businessmen. At the national level a civil-military hybrid format is in full throttle to plug in gaps in governance, official procedures, coordination, policy implementation and, above all, actualize difficult reforms. The unprecedentedly close civil-military liaison has come forward to deal with these complex tasks as existential challenge after the country was pulled back from the brink. This template is explicitly manifest in the form of enthusiastic and happy coordination between political and military leaderships, fruitful military diplomacy and institutional collaboration in the shape of Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC). While doubts surround the usefulness of the hybrid system in dealing with economic challenges, the businessmen continue to be on the blind spot of the government and the establishment. One only learns about business groups' separate interactions with the Prime Minister and the Chief of Army Staff (now Field Marshal). Why not institutionalize these meetings into an apex level consultative and decision-making platform. A tripartite civil-military-business model of economic governance could be created in which the corporate executives have a robust role in making recommendations with the understanding that these will be endorsed and implemented by the government. Corporate representatives may veto proposals which can adversely impact on the businesses and economic health. The implementation of policy recommendations may be monitored by the establishment after finding viable ways out of political expediencies. In the absence of such a body it took the government a long time before realizing to insulate the business community from National Accountability Bureau. The latest such organization is Federal Board of Revenue, which has run into controversies with the business community. The civil-military collaborative model, in the context of whole-of-government approach, provides a good ground to engage corporate leaders as the major players in economic revival. The suggested high level body could function as an expanded version of SIFC in a manner that political and military leaderships interact with eminent entrepreneurs to seek workable solutions of issues relating to regulations, taxes, energy pricing, monetary and fiscal policies, trade and investment, privatization, economic legislation, corporate laws, budgetary proposals, strategic issues linked to economy and above all the painful reforms. This triangular body, shielded from political disruptions and bureaucratic resistance, could operate independently for consistent and private-sector driven policies on the principle of economic pragmatism. The proposal might sound radical, but in extraordinary situations nations resort to non-traditional remedies. Since we have exhausted conventional governance mechanisms without achieving the desired outcome, the proposal to accord lead role to entrepreneurs as members of national economic team should be seen as a plausible measure with a sure promise of success. Pakistan has yet to fully come out of a precarious economic situation. The fragile economic scenario has been rendered more vulnerable by the Indian aggression and other multiple security threats. In these unusual circumstances, one key step must be to enlist business leaders, whom Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hailed as national heroes, in economic governance to salvage the economy. Empowering local businessmen in national decision-making will also lead to a huge increase in the ease of doing business, presenting a strong stimulus for attracting foreign investment. In a write-up for a newspaper Ahsan Iqbal, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, stated that 'expansion of the private sector and devolution of multiple responsibilities to provinces have made policymaking a multi-actor exercise with rising complexity.' Implicit in this statement is the important role of business sector in proposing strategies and modalities to the government. The economic transformation plan of the government could take off provided, among other things, the business leaders are irreversibly co-opted by the government in economic governance and decision-making. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Business Recorder
an hour ago
- Business Recorder
Consolidated fiscal operations
EDITORIAL: The summary of consolidated federal and provincial fiscal operations 2024-25 was uploaded on the Finance Division website on 5 August and presented a picture that challenges the government's claim that reforms are underway in all sectors to ensure that the ongoing thirty-nine-month International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme is the last one Pakistan would need to secure. The outlay of most concern to the general public is the sustained rise in current expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product on three counts: (i) it comprised 95 percent of total outlay in 2024-25 compared to 84 percent in 2022-23 as per the summary of the consolidated fiscal operations of that year; (ii) current expenditure was budgeted at around 17 trillion rupees in 2024-25 while the government spent 15.69 trillion rupees with 1.6 trillion rupees savings attributed to the decline in the discount rate — from 22 percent in June last year to 11 percent in the current year; however (iii) mark-up payments as a major component of current expenditure were 8,159,826 million rupees in 2023-24 against 8,887,417 million rupees in 2024-25 indicative of an increased reliance on borrowing by the government — up to 7,089 billion rupees last fiscal year as reported in the summary. Federal tax revenue rose to 11,744 billion rupees in 2024-25 against 9,311 billion rupees in 2023-24 — with the major increase attributed to increase in direct taxes (disturbingly consisting of withholding taxes levied in the sales tax mode) — an indirect tax — though wrongly credited under direct taxes in spite of the Auditor General's exhortation to the FBR to abandon this practice. The incidence of indirect taxes on the poor is greater than on the rich. Non-tax revenue increased from 3,050.4 billion rupees in 2023-24 to 4,905.9 billion rupees in 2024-25 due to higher petroleum levy collections (again an indirect tax) and more than doubling of State Bank of Pakistan profits which mopped up USD 8 billion from the open market last fiscal year to shore up dollar reserves that at USD 14.3 billion (25 July) are still lower than the USD 16 billion rollovers from friendly countries, leading to an erosion in the external value of the rupee. SBP has since agreed to ease purchases in the open market. Development expenditure rose from 635,148 million rupees in 2023-24 to 785,836 million rupees in 2024-25 — a rise that indicates authorisations as noted by the Planning Ministry however not disbursed due to fiscal constraints. The Finance Committee of parliament was informed that 596 billion rupees had been disbursed by end-May 2025, and it is rather difficult to accept that the government disbursed a whopping 189.8 billion rupees in June this year, the last month of the fiscal year. GDP (nominal) was estimated at 106,045 billion rupees in 2023-24 and 114,692 billion rupees in 2024-25, which implies an 8 percent rise, though actual GDP growth for last fiscal year was 2.6 percent. This may have led to an erosion in the rupee value which remained remarkably constant with the IMF documents exhorting the government to 'monitor the recent Real Effective Exchange Rate appreciation to avoid eroding competitiveness,' and/or a reduction in Consumer Price Index though that declined to 11.09 percent in 2024-25 against 28.31 percent in 2023-24. Bank borrowing by the provinces rose to negative 920,434 billion rupees against negative 212,157 billion rupees that no doubt contributed to claims of a surplus while non-bank also rose from negative 1022 billion rupees to 29,430 billion rupees. Sales tax on services (constitutionally a provincial tax) rose from 504,617 million rupees in 2023-24 to 612,418 million rupees in 2024-25 with Sindh continuing to take the lead at 284,427 million rupees (raising collections by 24.8 percent in comparison to 2023-24), Punjab collecting 264,026 million rupees (raising collections under this head by 17.6 percent compared to 2023-24), KPK at 40,772 million rupees (13.5 percent rise from the previous year) and Balochistan at 23,193 million rupees (7.7 percent increase). To conclude, the economic team managed to contain the primary balance to 6,168 billion rupees in 2024-25 against 9,529 billion rupees the year before while the budget deficit declined from 7,207 billion rupees in 2023-24 to 6,168 billion rupees in 2024-25; however, this was largely due to heavier borrowing in 2024-25. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Express Tribune
3 hours ago
- Express Tribune
Dar urges overhaul to boost labour export
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar addresses the UNSC's Open Debate on the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question on Wednesday in New York. Photo: X Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister (DPM/FM) Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar on Wednesday called for a strategic overhaul to boost skilled labour exports. The DPM chaired a high-level meeting to review Pakistan's Emigration, Overseas Employment, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Policy, with a focus on aligning the country's workforce with global market demands, a DPM's Office news release said. DPM Dar stressed the urgent need to invest in high-quality skill development, diversify into new employment sectors, and explore untapped international destinations for Pakistani workers. He highlighted the importance of aligning Pakistan's human capital with international demand to increase foreign remittances, broaden employment avenues abroad, and improve the country's global economic footprint. "The government is committed to upgrading skill development frameworks and expanding overseas employment opportunities. This will not only boost remittances but also enhance Pakistan's competitiveness on the global stage," said Dar.
