Electricity, petroleum price hike to prompt another wave of inflation

Karachi :Chairman of National Business Group of FPCCI, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum and All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Wednesday said the price of food and other essential items and services have seen an average increase of 31 percent during the last two and a half years.

The new high prices are stabilising but a new wave will hit country soon as a result of seventeen percent hike in the price of petroleum products and electricity, he said. 

Mian Zahid Hussain said that masses will have to brave further problems as the IMF is preparing to impose the so called stabilisation policies while will render many sectors of the economy lifeless.  

Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that there is no reduction in the food prices and there is no chance for any relief as the government has failed to reduce prices. 

Coronavirus coupled with uncontrolled prices have damaged the buying power of masses and they are compromising on health and education while mediocre are moving to cheap houses to handle rising prices.

Rates of edibles have crossed all limits at a time when the average incomes have decreased which is not enough to escape from hunger. This time around they are finding it hard to fulfil even their food needs from their meagre incomes.

Failure of the departments to collect taxes as per the IMF targets has resulted in the imposition of indirect taxes of poor while the lender is pushing the economy into further trouble for which masses will have to pay while it will damage the vote bank of the government, he warned.