The government on Thursday expressed inability to control a deepening supply-and-price crisis of wheat in one go and told the National Assembly it would adopt a phased approach to deal with the catastrophe triggering civil unrest now. Responding to a calling attention notice in the lower house, a federal minister said authorities would first attempt to curtail shortage of the commodity. And in second and third phases, efforts would be made to maintain prices where they are first and then to bring them down to a reasonable level matching the purchasing power of people, he added. "There is no possibility of prices coming down immediately," Youth Affairs Minister Khawaja Saad Rafiq said. He was responding to members' queries on behalf of Agriculture Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who is out of Pakistan on an official visit to Turkey. The minister said the government would fix the ex mill rates of flour also in other provinces like in Punjab. The provincial authorities in Lahore have set at Rs 375 per 20-kg the price of flour by mills. Rafiq expressed hope that the arrival of new crop into the market within a couple of days would help ease the crisis threatening the national unity by forcing Punjab to impose ban on the inter-provincial wheat movement. Problems of short supply and inflated prices are haunting Pakistan's wheat market for almost a year now. Rafiq attributed the problem to what he called short-sighted and mala fide policies of the previous government. Delay in the announcement of support price, failure to control smuggling to Afghanistan, allowing export without assessing domestic needs and then expensive imports, Rafiq counted, as reasons behind the making of such a high magnitude crisis. Several members from ruling coalition held former premier Shaukat Aziz responsible for the mess and asked the government to bring him back to Pakistan to penalise for the crime. A legislator from Karachi feared the shortage could touch five million tons if the smuggling to Afghanistan and India was not controlled immediately. NATURAL RESOURCES: Petroleum Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said the government must adopt a policy of giving employment in exploration and marketing companies to the people areas from where minerals were found. "This regime must follow a strategy to make locals stakeholders in oil and gas explored from their regions," the minister told the house in response to a calling attention notice. "It will help introduce a participatory spirit that has been lacking for 60 years in the past," he added. This was how the government could offer a dividend to locals out of natural resources, he concluded. Copyright Business Recorder, 2008