Daily Times

KARACHI: The executive members of export-oriented industrial sectors, agriculture and chambers of commerce and industry have expressed their concern over the rising inflation rate in the country.

Inflation affects the lower segment of the society which stands more than 70 percent of the total population of the country very badly, and worse, it affects them for life and for generations, lamented executive members of Pakistan Tanners Association, Pakistan Apparel Forum, Pakistan Yarn Merchants Association, Sindh Agriculture Forum, All Pakistan Marble Mining Processing Industry and Exporters Association, All Pakistan Business Forum, Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry and others. They have expressed concern over inflation rising to 4.8 percent during April 2017.

Inflation forces our majority of population in the country to spend almost their entire income for the very basic necessities of survival like food, clothing and shelter, business people added.

They urged government to take concerted measures for reducing the prices of essential commodities and daily consumable items.

This sharp rise in Consumer Price Index (CPI) on a monthly basis, along with ‘Whole-sale Price Index’ (WPI) and the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) on weekly basis are remained up.

Agha Saiddain, Ghulam Rabbani, Ibrahim Qureshi, Sanaullah Khan, Javed Bilwani, Shakeel Ahmad and others remarked, “The responsibility of our financial mangers and economists in the helm of government affairs to provide relief to the lowest income group masses, whose survival is being threatened by such high inflation”.

Year-on-Year CPI during April 2017 witnessed an increase of 4.78 percent as compared to the same month of the last year.

The essential items that witnessed the highest price-increase during April included wheat flour 5 percent, chicken and meat 4 percent, peas 53 percent, carrot 47 percent, kinnow 26 percent, apple 10 percent, banana 8 percent, lemon 40 percent, cauliflower 12 percent, private school fees 11 percent, potatoes 3 percent and house-rent more than 1.60 percent.

The trimmed core inflation has been observed at 4.8 percent in April as compared to April 2016.

“The average CPI-based inflation during the first 10 months of the current fiscal July-April 2017 has increased to 4.10 percent as compared to the same period of the previous year.”

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics revealed that on month-on-month basis, inflation was recorded at 1.4 percent in April as compared to March 2017. In April, WPI increased 0.89 percent, while SPI decreased 0.91 percent, according to the data.

The non-food and non-energy core inflation during April was recorded at 5.5 percent as compared to April 2016, during which it was recorded at 4.4 percent as compared to April 2015.

The budgetary people and financial mangers in particular should also keep eye on the interests of the business community as well as general people while preparing annual budget, they opined.

The government should concentrate on economic reforms besides, fair policy formulation, regulatory realignments and their implementation, they added.