Wholesale, retail prices gap widens in Pakistan

*Click the Title above to view complete article on https://www.nation.com.pk/.

Federal govt lags behind provinces in controlling food inflation

2024-11-11T06:17:04+05:00 Fawad Yousafzai

ISLAMABAD - The gap between wholesale and retail prices of basic food items in Pakistan has widened further, reaching up to 30 per­cent in October compared to the previous month.

Once again, the federal gov­ernment has proven to be the worst performer in maintaining retail prices of basic food items, compared to the four provin­cial governments, as the gap between wholesale and retail prices has reached 46 percent in its administrative jurisdiction.

Despite considerable reduc­tion in inflation in the country, the federal and provincial gov­ernments have failed to pro­vide relief to the consumer, as the retail prices at national lev­el were 21 to 30 percent higher than the wholesale market, of­ficial source told The Nation.

The district administrations in the entire country have failed to check the price hike of basic food items, where the re­tail prices such as vegetables, dairy, lentils, rice and poultry were up to 46 percent higher than the wholesale market, during the month of October.

Although the retail prices are higher in the entire coun­try from the wholesale market, however, the federal govern­ment is the worst performer where the gap is from 21 to 46 percent, the source said. The provincial government of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa is the best performer among federal gov­ernment and the federating units, where the gap between the retail and wholesale market is from 20 to 23.3 percent in the prices of various food items. In Punjab, the gap between the re­tail and wholesale market was 22.5 percent to 26.10 percent during October 2024. In Sindh, the gap between the retail and wholesale market is 22 to 33 percent, whereas in Balochistan it was from 21.70 to 26 percent higher than the wholesale mar­ket. Notably, the inflation rate in the country is on continuously decline during the current fiscal year and remained 7.2 percent in October, up 44-months low­est level of 6.9 percent in Sep­tember 2024. However, despite sharp decline in inflation large gaps in the wholesale and retail prices of some essential com­modities in the federal govern­ment, each province as well as at national level existed.

Last week, the meeting of the National Price Monitoring Com­mittee was informed that in October 2024, non-perishable food items experienced a con­trolled rise of 1.01 percent com­pared to previous month and a decrease of 1.46 percent com­pared to October 2023. Major decrease observed in the prices of wheat flour (-34.73 percent), sugar (-9.15 percent) and cook­ing oil (-10.2 percent). Over­all, the food inflation reflect­ing high stability in the prices declined from 28.9 percent in October 2023 to 2.7 percent in October 2024 in Urban area and declined from 28.6 percent in October 2023 to 0.6 percent in October 2024 in Rural area. Ad­ditionally, the Transport sector and fuels category saw a declin­ing trend (-6.13 percent) due to mainly decline in petrol and diesel (-18.5 percent) if com­pared to October last year.

View More News