ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Statistics, and Privatization Senator Muhammad Ishaq Dar has expressing concerns over increasing trend in prices of certain food commodities and directed the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) to look into the matter.
The Finance Minister stated this while chairing the meeting of the National Price Monitoring Committee (NPMC) held in the Finance Division on Wednesday. Representatives from the Provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhthunkhwa (KP), Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Ministries of Industries, Law and Justice, Commerce, National Food Security and Research, Interior, Planning Development and Reforms (PD&R), Inter Provincial Coordination, Statistics Division, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), Utilities Stores Corporation (USC) and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) attended the meeting.
The meeting was informed that the headline inflation measured by CPI has been contained at 2.86% in FY 2016 as compared to 8.62% in FY 2014 and 4.53% in FY 2015. The inflation recorded in FY 2016 is the lowest in 47 years. The CPI in July 2016 inched to 4.1% as compared to 1.9% in July last year.
The meeting noted the weekly trend of SPI which monitors the prices of 53 items since July 2015 and found that prices of more than 50 percent items are stable. The meeting noted the price movement of essential items and observed that the prices of Wheat Flour, Rice Basmati Broken, Rice Irri-6, Chicken, Eggs, Cooking Oil, Vegetable Ghee (tin and loose), Bananas, Moong Pulse and Onion decreased as compared to last year while the prices of Wheat, Beef, Mutton, Milk Fresh, Powdered Milk, Mash Pulse, Gram Pulse, Sugar, Red Chillies and Garlic increased. The meeting noted that the prices of poultry have declined as compared to last year and are now stable on account of government supportive policies.
The rising trend of potatoes prices was also discussed in the meeting and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar urged the provincial governments to be more vigilant to control the prices and concerned federal ministries to take necessary measures in this regard and stressed to catch this issue right now so that the prices may not rise further. He also urged that we should look into the canning of tomato paste when the prices of tomatoes are lower so there remains continuous supply of tomatoes products in the market. He also advised CCP to examine the increasing meat and mutton prices trend and bring up the findings in the next meeting so that corrective measures are taken. The increasing trend in prices of pulses was also observed by the Minister and he advised Ministry of Food Security and Research to expedite the process to increase the supply of pulses in the market to arrest the rising trend in prices.
The meeting also reviewed the prices in sasta bazaar and open market and noted that the prices are much lower in sasta bazaar as compared to open market. The Minister urged that the people should benefit from these bazars.
The meeting also reviewed the regional price comparison of Twenty two (22) essential commodities among Islamabad, New Delhi and Dhaka and observed that the prices of nine (9) items which include wheat, wheat flour, chicken farm, petrol, diesel, rice basmati, vegetable ghee, moong and mash pulses are lower in Pakistan as compared to New Delhi and Dhaka, while nine items (9) including beef, tomatoes, eggs, Milk fresh, sugar, mutton, red chillies, onion and gram pulse are second lowest and only five (5) items such as potatoes, masoor pulse, DAP, tea and urea are higher.
The meeting also noted international prices movement of essential commodities and found no abnormal price behaviour.
