ISLAMABAD: Inflation is expected to shoot up with the 9 percent increase in prices of petroleum products and 2 percent expected increase in power tariff thus hiking the cost of doing business in other sectors of economy and directly impacting the common man, former finance minister Dr Salman Shah said while talking to Pakistan Today.
Monthly increase in petroleum prices and power tariff has drifted the country to stagnation, he said, adding that it will have adverse effects on the unemployment situation.
The inflation rates based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 15.7 percent on the year on year basis because of the increase in food prices last year while the same statistic stood at 13.77 percent during the first quarter of the current fiscal year only.
The government has neither vision and nor capability to perform its duties, Shah said, adding that its failure to get the country out of crisis is blatantly evident. Economist Dr Shahid Hassan Siddiqui said that the increase in energy prices was drifting the country to the brink of civil war.
The reports of United Nations have said that food insecurity was increasing in Pakistan with up to 90 million people surviving on one meal a day. “People are taking their own lives and the lives of their families because of hunger and unemployment. But if the inflation continues then they might start targeting each other,” he said.
It was an irony that the dictates of IMF were implemented at a time when the public was under a severe financial crunch, he said, adding that the government was allowing the IMF to ruin the lives of the common man.
‘Hike in fuel prices will add to common man’s woes’
