Minister for Finance, Ishaq Dar on Monday directed Ministry of National Food Security and Research to analyse and monitor the export of potatoes to ensure that domestic prices are not affected. He was chairing a meeting of National Price Monitoring Committee here to review the price movement of essential items in the country.
The meeting observed that the prices of wheat, wheat flour, chicken, eggs, bananas, potatoes, tomatoes, rice, cooking oil, vegetable gee decreased as compared to last year while the prices of milk powder, onion, red chillies, garlic, beef, mutton and pulses increased.
The Committee also noted increasing trend in some products such as pulses (moong, mash, and masoor) and garlic and directed Ministry of National Food Security and Research to closely monitor the prices of these items and take measures to bring them down.
Ishaq Dar observed that the prices of the most of the essential items like rice basmati broken, rice irri, mutton, mustard oil, banana, masoor pulse, gram pulse, potatoes, tomatoes and garlic are very high in Islamabad as compared to the provinces. He directed Islamabad Capital Administration to take appropriate administrative measures to check and control the price disparity with the neighbouring regions. The Minister expressed concern over the delay in import of gram pulse by Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) and Ministry of Commerce to expedite the process to arrest the price increase of the product.
