Waiting anxiously for precious onion supplies from across the border, traders in Amritsar say land exports to India are being “deliberately blocked” by Pakistan’s incumbent federal commerce minister.
Exporters in Lahore, who are reportedly awaiting clearances to dispatch more than 3,000 metric tonnes of onions across the Attari-Wagah Border to India, have informed trading partners in Amritsar that “commerce minister Makhdoom Ameen Faheem is keen on exporting the stocks to the Middle East and Sri Lanka”.
According to the traders, Mr Faheem, who belongs to an influential Sindh based clan and has old business connections with Sri Lanka and and many Middle Eastern countries, was personally responsible for the abrupt suspension of fresh vegetable exports to India via the land route.
“The decision has been strongly resented by Lahori exporters who can see the huge price advantage and the ease of transportation to India rather than the more expensive overseas export to Sri Lanka or the Gulf nations,” said a merchant in Amritsar’s old Gawal Mandi.
According to him, his business partners in Pakistan have 300 truckloads of onions waiting to roll into Amritsar and are mounting great pressure on Islamabad to allow exports even temporarily.
“That 3,000 tonnes could help most of north India tide over the price hike and would help suppress onion prices below `40 per kilo instead of the current `75 to `80,” he said.
Meanwhile, information on commerce minister Faheem, who is also chairman of the PPP (Pakistan People’s Party) in Pakistan’s National Assembly, suggests he is still under investigation for alleged corruption in an insurance scam and also for appointing his cronies to the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan. The minister is also the spiritual leader of the Islamic Sarwari Jamaat.
The recent Wikileaks cables, citing contradictions amidst Pakistani leaders reportedly described him as: ‘Amin Fahim leads a religious Islamic group while enjoying an occasional bloody mary.’
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`8cr found in I-T raids on vegetable merchants
AGE CORRESPONDENT
CHANDIGARH
Jan. 12: Statewide raids by the I-T department have yielded nearly `8 crores of unaccounted cash from fresh wholesale vegetable merchants in three Punjab cities. The money was recovered during multiple raids to survey the accounts of traders in north Indian towns over the past week. The surveys, carried out to detect hoarding of onion stocks, included premises in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Faridabad and Jammu.
IT officials disclosed that `4.25 crores in unaccounted cash was recovered from a single vegetable merchant in Amritsar. Dirty cash was similarly seized at Jalandhar and Ludhiana while details of the cash seizures from Chandigarh, Faridabad and Jammu are still being collated, the officials said.
The IT surveys, which reflect startling mismatches between actual physical stocks and that documented in account books, are expected to throw up major revelations on traders’ involvement in artificially pushing up onion prices.
The IT surveys have provoked vehement protests from Punjab’s vegetable merchants who insist the rising prices are merely a consequence of high costs in onion growing areas.