Who is Authorized to Exercise Legal Control Over Sugar Price Fixation in Pakistan?

There is no doubt that sugar pricing evokes more than mere emotions among Pakistani citizens and industry stakeholders annually. Every crushing season rekindles the debate generated decades ago as to who exactly controls the pricing of this essential commodity. The second largest agro-based industry is a victim of political capture, hoarding, rent seizing, structural defects, administrative inefficiencies and what not; a good deal of credit can be given to the stakes held by politicians motivated by self interest, multiple overlapping and conflicting federal and provincial laws, misreading of ‘rules of businesses’ and the everlasting confusing impact of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution which has haphazardly scattered the responsibilities between different government departments and divisions, under the garb of which the sugar mafia and the sattay baaz benefit by monopolizing the price hike every year.

The Supreme Court in Regarding enormous increase in the price of flour: In the matter of Constitution Petition no. 52 of 2013 [2014 SCMR 329], a matter pertaining to the supply and fixation of the price of wheat, pursuant to its constitutional jurisdiction, instructed the federal government through the Ministry of National Food Security and Research Division and the provincial governments through their Chief Secretaries, to take necessary measures to ensure the availability of the wheat/flour and other foodstuffs to the public at a controlled rate.