- Importing may do more harm than good
The recent meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet failed to finalize a wheat import plan amid a rise of two percent in the price in the last week because Punjab is refusing to pay the price of import, and insists on not paying more than Rs 1400 per 40 kg. The plan is to import 1.5 million tons of wheat to overcome the shortage created when Punjab and Sindh failed to achieve their wheat acquisition targets in 2019, but wheat export was still permitted by the federal government, which then faced a public outcry after the staple became short in the market.
The refusal of the Punjab to pay more than a certain price is based on the simple fact that it doesn’t have the money. The federal government says it doesn’t either. In that case, if the wheat is imported at high prices, it will not lower the price of wheat. The federal government does not seem to have thought the importation out, for it was announced, perhaps to give the impression that the federal government was doing something about the crisis, but without thinking through to issues like who would put up the Rs 75 billion needed for the import, who would pay the Rs 22.5 billion needed to bring the price down to local levels, or the demand and supply position.
The PTI government has developed an attitude of kicking the can down the road, of announcing solutions involving future action, and only when the time comes for finding out there are objections to be met and fresh problems to be solved. This amateur method of dealing with issues of governance cannot go on for all that much longer, not without coming unstuck. While this is not a sound method of approaching any problem of governance, it is absolutely dangerous when handling a national staple. It might be politically galling for the present government, but there is no credible method in this crisis for the government to indulge in its favourite pastime of blaming its predecessors. After all, it itself made all the decisions in this case. Assumptions of dishonesty or incompetence cannot be avoided.
