DUSHANBE, February 15, 2011, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan’s Public Procurement Agency (PPA) offered 600 tons of wheat flour, 100 tons of sugar and 100 tons of rice at state-run fairs that were organized across the country on February 12-13, the PPA deputy director Muhammadi Mulloyev told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, the “food intervention” has shown that there is no deficiency of these basic food products in the country “as there was no any buying flurry at the fairs.” “On February 12-13, we sold only 384 tons of flour, 10 tons of sugar and 6.5 tons of rice,” noted Mulloyev, “The figures show that there is no imbalance between supply and demand for these products in the country, and prices rise more for external factors such as increasing international prices for these products than for market shortage.”
We will recall that part of wheat flour, sugar and rice from the national reserve were sold to the population at restricted prices in order to curb increasing food prices in the country. According to PPA, the state-run fairs organized across the country last weekends offered flour, sugar and rice at prices 10-15% lower than the market prices.
According to data from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MEDT), prices for local grade I flour have risen 80 percent in the past year and prices for imported flour have risen 76 percent. Prices for rice and sugar have risen over the report period 23 and 25 percent respectively.
