Blog

Advisor to Prime Minister (PM) on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs Abdul Hafeez Sheikh has claimed that tomatoes are being sold at Rs17 per kilogramme, Pakistan Today reported.

However, the fruit is being sold at as much as Rs320 per kilogramme in the market as reported by citizens who bought groceries from multiple locations in the city on Monday morning.

Hafeez Sheikh also advised people to buy tomatoes only from the sabzi mandi if they did not wish to splurge on the basic food item.

When some of the reporters present at the scene told him that tomatoes were, in fact, being sold at Rs240 per kilo, he refuted their comment, saying people were lying.

Watch Video:

A journalist said: “Which sabzi mandi, sir?” To which, Dr Sheikh responded: “You go and check it out yourself!”

Another journalist added: “Is it the sabzi mandi of Islamabad that you’re talking about?”

Immediately, then, the adviser looked directly at the camera, muttering under his breath, “oh this again,” and everyone behind him laughed.

“That’s what is being run on the TV,” Dr Sheikh noted, to which one of the reporters said: “But on the TV, it says tomatoes are being sold for Rs240 a kilo.”

A journalist responded with a fresh personal story: “Sir, I myself bought tomatoes for Rs300 a kilo.”

“Oh but I am agreeing that prices of many commodities need to be controlled. Agriculture [industry] has seasonality,” the PM’s adviser explained, as someone from behind persistently tries to stop the person holding the phone from recording the video of Dr Sheikh’s comments.

“There are storage facilities for many things, especially fresh produce, but we don’t have them in our country, so we need to come up with solutions for such problems”, the advisor added.

Then there’s this thing that if you increase the capacity, then it’s natural that you’d predict beforehand about which things experience seasonal shortage, and, therefore, you can order it prior and store and there would be additional storage cost,” Dr Shiekh said.

Vendors and hawkers claim that the high prices are not their fault since wholesale prices have shot up significantly.

Tomato prices have jumped to Rs320 a kilogram (kg) under the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, sending a shockwave to consumers with a massive jump from Rs160 per kg within a week.

“Only two consumers bought half a kg of tomato each out of 12 to 15 customers as most of them purchased 250 grams because of the high rates,” Dawn quoted a Karachi-based vendor as saying.

He reportedly blamed the hike on the soaring wholesale rate of tomato to Rs260-270/kg from Rs120-140 last Friday.

According to the report, the vendor was of the view that the arrival of tomato from Quetta and Swat had slowed down drastically because of the winter wave that has affected tomato crop.

The city government had quoted Saturday’s consumer price of Rs199 per kg for tomato which was Rs147 on Friday. However, neither tomato nor any other such items were available at official rates in the city.

Yet there is some stability in the prices of other vegetables such as capsicum, whose price dropped to Rs240 from Rs280-320 per kg of last week.

Falahi Anjuman Wholesale Vegetable Market New Sabzi Mandi President Haji Shahjehan said the arrival of Iranian tomato had also come to a halt followed by the slow arrival of Balochistan crop.

While disagreeing with Rs276-270 per kg wholesale rate at the mandi, he said vegetable dealers quoted very high wholesale rates to justify their retail price as tomato’s actual wholesale rate on Saturday was Rs220 per kg.