Wheat support price jitters
Holy cows in the federal cabinet
ACabinet meeting is supposed to be a forum for healthy debate, where ministers bring to bear the experience and political instincts they have to areas outside their departmental limits. Still, this is not supposed to be license for a freeforall, which seems to be what happened at Tuesday’s meeting of the federal Cabinet when its consideration of the wheat support price turned into the rest of the Cabinet criticizing the performance of the concerned ministers over the failure to control the rises in the prices of wheat and sugar. The Wheat support price had initially had an increase approved by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet, but even that mechanism for saving the full Cabinet from having to get into the nittygritty of issues did not work. The result was that the ECC decision on the support price was deferred until today.
The Food Security Minister Fakhar Imam came under fire for being the minister unable to control food inflation, as did Economic Affairs Minister Khusro Bakhtiar, whose family owns sugar mills which benefited from the shortage. The time till the arrival of supplies being imported is January, which implies two or three months more of high prices. The Cabinet infighting masks the uncomfortable truth that the meetings allowing export of wheat and sugar, which created the shortage the government is unable to control, were chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan himself. Perhaps he can take some grim satisfaction in not being the target of criticism by his own ministers.
Mr Khan is avoiding responsibility by letting ministers and officials take the blame, and accusing officials of not obeying his orders. The example of Makhdoom Khusro might explain the problem. At the time of the sugar prices going out of control, when Makhdoom Khusro’s family was revealed as owning a benefiting mill, he had the Food Security portfolio. Mr Khan kept him in the Cabinet, merely changing his portfolio. He has not taken any action against his Finance Adviser, Dr Hafeez Sheikh. If there is such impunity among members of his immediate team, why should anyone else worry about what he has said?