After flour, prices of pulses going up in Pakistan

Just when the prices of wheat flour are soon going to ease, following a merciless upward trend witnessed over the past few months, another fundamental kitchen commodity started to become costlier for people in Pakistan badly battered by the inflation.

Prices of pulses are going up, thanks to the non-clearance of imported consignments at the port due to a delay in the approval of relevant documents by banks, Dawn reported.

Karachi Wholesalers Grocers Association (KWGA) chairman Rauf Ibrahim said the traders held a protest outside the State Bank's head office on Thursday against the no-clearance of over 6,000 containers of pulses at the port for the past two months on account of dollar shortage and banks' reluctance in approval of import documents.

A commodity importer/exporter, Faisal Anis Majeed told Dawn that the wholesale price of gram pulse had risen to 205 PKR per kg from 180 PKR on January 1, 2023, and 170 PKR on December 1, 2022.

Masoor price reached 225 PKR from 205 PKR while it stood at 200 PKR in December.

On retail markets, masoor, mung, mash and gram pulse rates have swelled to 270-280 PKR, 250-300 PKR, 380-400 PKR and 230-260 per PKR kg from 210-240 PKR, 180-220 PKR, 260-300 PKR and 160-200 PKR per kg in January 2022.

The retail price may crawl up further due to non-clearance of pulses containers from the port.

Majeed lamented that banks had stopped accepting any import documents from January 1, 2023, as well as payment of currently arrived cargo and other relevant documents, Dawn reported.

Pakistan consumes about 1.5 million tonnes of imported pulses annually.

He pointed out that stuck-up containers are incurring heavy demurrage and shipping company detention charges on a daily basis.

This additional cost will obviously be transferred to end consumers, he added.