Pakistanis who woke up to headlines about inflation rising to nine percent again in September and another Rs4 per litre increase in petrol prices ought to be forgiven for taking official claims of economic improvement and promises of controlling prices with a pinch of salt. The petrol bomb, as opposition parties and common people alike are calling in, will now cause second-round inflation of its own as input cost of everything under the sky will increase because of it. And the fact that this is happening when wages have not risen and are still not rising, neither are there more jobs, makes it that much more painful. And the way the government is going about explaining this also risks to erode more of its credibility. The argument that Pakistan’s petrol prices are lowest in the region is flat out wrong, because all cross country price comparisons are done while taking into account per capita income and average purchasing power as well; areas where Pakistan lags behind by quite a distance. Now, as the government goes about fulfilling its promise of intervening to control prices, for which it would have to cough up subsides, there is going to be a lot more pressure on the current account than it had first estimated. It’s also not correct to blame just the rise in international commodity prices in the aftermath of the pandemic. Grated, prices have risen, but Pakistan’s bout with inflation, especially in food items, predates the international recovery as well as the pandemic itself. Therefore, there are clearly supply chain problems inside the country that are responsible for inflation that just refuses to go away. And the new international trend is only making things much worse. The best thing to do right now would be to address internal problems, and for once sort out the interest groups and mafias that the government itself identified as a big part of the problem, rather than deflect legitimate blame with excuses. *