Inflation beats govt target

A homeless person now will have to pay Rs 1200 more on house rent if he was paying Rs 10000 just few months back. The cost of transport and communication services has increased by one-fourth. A middle class person now should think to save extra ten rupees on every 100 rupees, if he wanted to enlighten his children with education. The cost of medicare has also increased by over 14 per cent.

An economist closely working with the government said that partly the current inflation in the country was because of high world oil and food prices and partly was the result of mismanagement of the last and the current governments both.

“Pakistan is an agrarian country. We cannot control oil prices but we can manage our own food”, he added. The economist, who had insight of the government working, said so far the current rulers were even unable to understand what was going on the economic front. “They (economic managers) don’t have concrete policy”.

He differed with the policy of increasing interest rate to control inflation, arguing, “The high money supply growth was because the government heavily borrowed to bridge the gap between its income and expenditure. If the SBP wanted to increase interest rate it should also bar the government from borrowing”, he added.

“Give incentives to farmers to grow more to overcome food shortage and bring down its price”, he said.