ISLAMABAD – Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) Chairman Anjum Bashir refused to disclose the names of the “sugar mafia” during a meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Trade here on Tuesday.
The committee met under its Chairman Dastgir in Parliament House to review the increase in the prices of sugar and urea. Bashir said if he made public the names, it would “create a problem” for him.
He told the committee the TCP was holding reserves of 400,000 tonnes of sugar, which was sufficient till the next crushing season. The committee members inquired that if sugar was available in surplus, why was its price being increased again and again and who was responsible for it.
Some committee members, including Shireen Arshad, said that many trucks loaded with sugar had gone missing on the way before reaching utility stores and some government officers were involved in this scam.
The TCP chairman agreed but said he was not responsible for it and that controlling sugar prices was not his mandate, it was the responsibility of the provinces to keep the price of sugar in check. He said subsidies in urea prices worth more than Rs 7.5 billion had been provided to farmers.
