“We are running our mills with whatever quantity of wheat is available in the market. We will have to face acute shortage of wheat if the government failed to arrange imports from India - one of the leading supplies -- which has been imposing restriction on exports for a couple of year,” said Kumud Dugar, president of the Association of Nepalese Rice, Oil and Pulse Industry.
Though India has expressed commitment to supply 200,000 tons of food grains to Nepal on various occasions, including the visits of President Dr Ram Baran Yadav and Prime Minister Madav Kumar Nepal to the southern neighbor, the government has failed to arrange the imports from the southern neighbor.
Dugar said over two dozen big flour mills across the country are consuming 15,000 quintals to 17,000 quintals of wheat to produce around 7,000 quintals to 10,000 quintals of wheat flour and refined flour.
Wheat supply may worsen after couple of months: Mill owners
“With what the mills have in stock, we can´t run mills for not more than next two months. Consumers will have to suffer high price rise after we run out of stock amid tightening in exports from India,” said Dugar. He, however, informed that the impact of global decline in wheat production won´t affect Nepali market which has been sourcing wheat only from India.
Wheat production is expected to go down by 4 percent this year due to the worst drought in Russia in the last 50 years. The drought prompted the Russian government to slash wheat export by 21 percent this year. Wheat production is expected to fall to 651.7 million tons this year from 679 million recorded a year earlier, according to a report prepared by
Informa, a Tennessee- based agricultural researcher.
Dugar said the domestic market has been seeing a continued rise in wheat prices despite double digit rise in production, as the domestic production can fulfill the demand for hardly six months. “Despite supply deficit, we have yet to see shortage of wheat flours in the market,” he added.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives, wheat production grew by a whopping 16 percent to 1.55 million tons during 2009/10.
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