Chairman Pakistan Industrial & Traders Associations Front (PIAF), Faheem Ur Rehman Saigol has warned the authorities that rising inflation continued to hurt economic growth, demanding a careful policy to keep it in control, as the prices of essential commodities continued to stay away from the reach of the financially vulnerable segments, with data showing the annual short-term inflation well above 40 percent.
In a statement issued on Sunday, he said that the government computes the Sensitive Price Indicator on a weekly basis to evaluate the price fluctuation of necessary commodities by evaluating the rates of 51 items collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.
The SPI report for the week ending on January 4 reflected an increase in the rates of 19 commodities, decrease in nine and stability in 23.
Quoting the data, PIAF Chairman Faheem Ur Rehman Saigol observed that trade and industry have suffered from the double-edged sword of food and energy prices with transport inflation peaking to a record 65% while the annual inflation rate increased to 24.9% in 2023. The SPI for the current week ended on 04th January, 2024 increased by 0.81 percent, the PBS said in its report. Major increase is observed in the prices of Tomatoes (16.04 percent), Chicken (13.98 percent), Eggs (3.20 percent), Onions (3.04 percent), Bananas (2.13 percent), Pulse Gram (2.12 percent), Sugar (2.04 percent), Pulse Moong (1.68 percent), LPG (1.19 percent), Firewood (0.51 percent) and Georgette (0.23 percent).” The year on year trend depicts increase of 42.86 percent, it added.
Pakistan’s rapidly depreciating national currency and its rising energy imports led to significant inflation, prompting the central bank to retain the policy rate at 22 percent last month to mitigate the situation.—INP
