Members of the Senate Standing Committee on Industries and Production have lashed out at the Utility Stores Corporation (USC), saying that subsidised goods are not available at these outlets.

They asked USC officials to inform them on which commodities subsidy was available.

Committee members expressed their anger over ignoring their recommendations laid out in previous meetings and insisted that in future their proposals must be adopted.

Responding to the Senate panel’s observations in a meeting on Friday, USC officials said subsidy was being provided on five essential commodities under the prime minister’s relief package. These items included wheat flour, sugar, rice, pulses and ghee.

Earlier, the utility stores were offering both targeted and untargeted subsidy on goods sale, but later in a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee, it was decided to provide subsidised goods to only those people eligible under the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).

At utility stores, according to the USC officials, sugar is being sold for Rs100 per kg to the BISP-registered people while for other consumers the sweetener is available at Rs146 per kg.

BISP consumers can avail themselves of the subsidy through swiping their BISP cards at USC outlets. They are eligible for a monthly quota of 5kg sugar, 5kg ghee and 20kg wheat flour.

“With the adoption of IT systems, transparency has been ensured at the outlets,” a USC official said.

Giving a briefing, the USC general manager revealed that they needed 30,000 tons of sugar every month to meet consumer needs while in Ramazan consumer demand jumped to 60,000 tons. “Sugar is purchased for utility stores by floating tenders,” the GM said. It was pointed out that people were hoarding the products available at utility stores. However, the USC officials stressed that with the introduction of IT reforms, the utility stores were working better than before.

Utility stores have made a profit of Rs3 billion owing to digital transformation, they said, adding that they were returning in taxes to the government an amount equal to the subsidy they were receiving.

According to them, around 4,000 utility stores are working across the country while there are slightly over 1,000 franchise USC outlets.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 16^th, 2023.

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