Staff Reporter Lahore
After bearing the brunt of hard economic conditions amid the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers in Pakistan have been hit by steep increase in prices of raw material for industrial products and other commodities including food items.
According to experts and global trends, inflationary pressure is likely to surge in near future meaning that masses will have to pay extra money to buy essential food and non-food items.
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported that consumer price index soared to 11.1% in April 2021, the highest rate of inflation in past 13 months.
The situation is quite similar in the global arena as prices in global commodity markets are skyrocketing with cost of crude oil anticipated to cross $70 per barrel.
Recently copper price crossed the $10,000 per ton mark while values of steel, aluminium, lumber, tin and other such metal is also rising.
As a result, automakers all over the world have moved to hike prices of vehicles and manufacturers from other industries are also following suit.
Volvo Car India notified price increase of up to Rs200,000 on Monday with immediate effect in order to partially offset the impact of rising input costs.
Earlier in April 2021, Maruti Suzuki, Nissan, Renault, Hyundai, Ford, Kawasaki and Hero Honda raised prices for Indian market by around Rs2,500 on motorcycles and Rs33,000 on cars.
“We have to follow the suit because Pakistani automobile market cannot absorb price shocks on the back of increase in raw material prices,” said an executive of a four-wheeler company that recently entered the Pakistani market.
