If nations could be run by merely printing money, muses the MQMs Altaf Hussain, no country would have been poor. Not only is the statement true, it also reeks of chutzpah. For a party that is against reforms in the GST on one hand and is against the abolition of subsidies on petroleum products and electricity tariffs on the other, the party seems to have a lot of gumption bringing up the governments penchant for borrowing from the central bank. There are also no points for guessing, of course, how the opposition and coalition parties are going to react to the latest petroleum bombshell. Prices of the product have gone up by 9.9 per cent. The substantial hike is not much of a surprise, considering that the jump followed the four-month freeze in oil price hikes that the government was forced to observe by the opposition and coalition parties.
Around the middle of the last decade, two new facts were painfully clear to the observers of the global economy. One, the age of cheap fuel was over. Two, the age of cheap food was also over. The latter was a result of factors too many to delve into here. But apart though the urban poor and middle-classes who were terribly hit by the rising food prices, there was an accompanying affluence in the agricultural rural areas. The rising fuel prices, however, wasnt particularly good news for anyone but the OPEC. A function of instability in the middle-east and an incessant increase in consumption, the high oil prices seem to be here for the long haul.
This has affected consumers in the US the most, who are some of the most fuel-inefficient in the world. Expecting Pakistani markets to be exempt of the laws of economics is almost like expecting the laws of physics to suspend themselves for the national cricket team whenever theyre playing. Fluctuations in the international oil prices have to be translated to the public. Anything other than that is plain irresponsible. If the subtleties of monetary economics are not lost on the MQM, perhaps a crash course on the commodities market and public finance would do the party and the like-minded lot in the Leagues and the religious parties a measure of good.
