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GT,

Hoarding may have been a factor, but not a decisive one. Reason is as soon as the wheat prices began to rise, the central bank of Pakistan called-in all the outstanding funding by commercial banks for inventories, which of-course meant the privately held stocks were forced to came into the market to repay the loans.

However, it is also rumored that the exports were only on paper, while stocks were held within the country with the connivance of the Ministry of Food & Agriculture. I don't know how far that is true, but the same thing happened with sugar in 2006 as well as with cement in 2007. In case of all three, exports were said to have been made resulting in local shortages, and imports at much higher prices. There's no reason to believe administrative oversight was responsible in all three cases.

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