Daily Times

Nobody will argue with Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin, except perhaps some of his own cabinet colleagues, that food inflation is a “major challenge” yet he would find few people who would share his optimism that “every possible effort” is being made to tackle this problem and that the government would be able to control it. His explanation that international commodity prices are to blame would also only have been acceptable if this were a relatively new problem in Pakistan. But since it has persisted practically since the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf) government came to power, and prices were elevated here even when commodity prices were depressed in the international market, this is very much a local problem that has only been made worse by international trends.

There was a time, not too long ago but before Shaukat Tarin was made finance minister, when everybody in government including the prime minister blamed special interest groups, middlemen, and even mafias, for price distortion in the local market. And while we heard a lot about the many ways in which those mafias were going to be brought to book, nothing happened on the ground. Prices, especially, were never controlled and the common people have continued to suffer; something made infinitely worse because of the economic troubles brough about by the pandemic.

Now we’ve got to the point that people have stopped paying much attention to the finance ministry’s promises about rationalising prices, especially in food items with very inelastic demand. But with less than half the electoral cycle, the government simply cannot risk alienating the people any longer, particularly if it’s because nobody could do anything about runaway inflation in kitchen items. Interestingly, while the finance minister promised, yet again, to do something about all this he did not mention precisely what he had in mind. So the people, who last heard about some sort of very serious state action against price manipulating mafias but didn’t see anything of the sort materialise, are now apparently expected to wait with bated breaths to see just what the finance minister is going to pull out of his hat to make inflation go away.

Hopes that the government’s attention to this subject might soothe nerves are also most likely misplaced since the people have been taken down this road may times before, only to disappoint them on every outing. How different this time will turn out to be remains to be seen. *