Regrettably, from the day PML-N government has come into power, prices of petroleum products and edible items have remained consistently high and volatile. Inflation has been simply out of control. Why don’t the economic experts and financial managers of the incumbent government realize that massive hike in petrol, diesel, and electricity prices will have an adverse effect on an already dismal situation of the country.
With this recent sharp increase in petrol, diesel and electricity prices once again, inflation has gone to the extreme. It goes without saying that inflation has a rolling snowball effect on the urban poor, I mean the salaried class, where the prices that are seen today are higher than they were days before, and the salary based income fails to rise higher compared to the price hikes. It is now imperative for the present government not to indulge, among many other things, in ambitious economic stimulus packages that can force it to borrow a huge amount of money from the State Bank of Pakistan which will only lead the economy into another inflationary abyss.
However, the rulers are requested to have mercy on this nation whose purchasing power has already been paralyzed within these couple of months and take various monetary and fiscal measures to tame this hyper inflation and strengthen the national economy. It is proposed that there should be a ban on junkets at the cost of national exchequer and non-productive activities such as conferences in the five star hotels where millions of rupees are spent on food and lodging. Imagine of all this money is spent on improving the lot of disaster-hit people in Sindh and Balochistan.
HASHIM ABRO,
Islamabad. October 10.