It’s not enough for the finance ministry to just warn about yet higher inflation around the corner, it must also find ways to mitigate its effects and then communicate them to the general public. Just announcing that the uptrend in prices will continue sends all the wrong signals to people who are already burdened with very high inflation. And it’s also not fair just to blame international commodity prices for the degree of inflation at home because while there is no doubt that prices have rebounded rather dramatically in the aftermath of the recession-induced by the pandemic, it is also very true that inflation in Pakistan was a problem, especially in food items with inelastic demand, since well before Covid-19. In fact, this was one of the first problems encountered by the new government and the people. First, the government blamed special interest groups for this phenomenon and promised to sort them out. When none of that happened, and by that time international commodity prices had started rising very sharply, it was very convenient to shift the blame on global economic trends. The point is that the government has only itself to blame for much of today’s inflationary pressure. Supply chain bottlenecks were never addressed, the mafias were never reined in, and employment and wages never kept pace with prices. The assertion that prices in Pakistan are much lower than regional countries is also not entirely correct since such comparisons can simply not be made without also taking into account indicators like per capita income, income levels, etc. Now, with the ruling party forced to transfer the impact of oil prices onto consumers, inflation can only be expected to rise for the foreseeable future. Already, the cumulative Rs14 per litre hike in petrol prices during the last month has pushed up transportation costs by more than 20 per cent in a few short days. Brent crude is now flirting with $90 per barrel, and analysts do not rule out a move past the $100 per barrel mark, so things are going to get a lot worse before they even begin to get any better. So the government needs to come up with two complementing strategies immediately. First, it must work out how to pass the minimum burden on consumers. And second, it must also figure out how to explain all this to the common man. *