25,000 MT of flour on the way
by Uditha Kumarasinghe and P. Krishnasamy
The Commerce and Consumer Affairs Ministry will import
25,000 metric tons of flour from Ukraine and Argentina within the next
two weeks to stabilise the rising prices of flour.
The Ministry has already placed orders from Ukraine and
Argentina to import flour to meet the heavy demand, a Ministry spokesman
told the Daily News yesterday.
He said the CWE has already issued adequate stocks of
flour at a low price to bakery owners to meet any shortage. A further
stock of 6,000 metric tons of flour has been stored at CWE store
complexes at Maligawatta and Welisara.
The Ministry has implemented a streamlined program to
distribute flour among consumers and bakery owners through Co-operative
Societies. A kilo of flour is sold by Co-operative Societies at Rs.
24.00 in Colombo and Rs. 26.50 in the outstations, the spokesman said.
He said after the removal of the flour subsidy, Prima
has increased the price of a kilo of flour to Rs. 31.50. Bread sold
earlier at Rs. 14.00 or Rs. 14.50 has gone up to Rs. 18 or Rs. 19.
"The Ministry requests bakery owners to provide bread to
consumers at their previous price as the CWE provides flour to bakery
owners at lower rates without any shortage," he said.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Jeyaraj
Fernandopulle said there was no need to increase the price of bread as
the CWE provides flour at low rates. He said there was a shortage of
flour in the local market during the past eight to 10 months, which led
to a rise in bread prices. Fernandopulle is considering having
discussions with the Bakery Owners' Association to obtain a fixed price
for bread produced using flour supplied by the Government.
Fernandopulle said there are sufficient stocks of flour
in CWE warehouses in Colombo and the Ministry was issuing them to CWE
outlets and bakeries throughout the island. Punitive action will be
taken against bread profiteers, the Minister warned. The Government is
keen to keep bread price between Rs.14 to Rs.15, he said.
Fifteen lorry-loads of flour was despatched to the
Jaffna Agricultural and Co-operative Society (JACS) for consumers in the
Jaffna peninsula and five lorry-loads will be despatched every day for
them, he said. Since the JACS paid 'taxes' to the LTTE, the price of
bread and flour are likely to be comparatively high in the peninsula, he
said. |
