ISLAMABAD
\nThe Ferozepur Road Industry Association (FRIA) has warned the high cost of doing business would hurt economic growth, demanding a careful policy to keep it in control, as Pakistan\u2019s inflation reading ticked up 0.11% in the week ended July 11, 2024 compared to the previous week, fueled by the hike in food prices, and maintained its uptrend for the second successive week.
\nAccording to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the short-term inflation gauge, called the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), registered a surge of 23.33% when compared with the same week of last year.
\nFRIA Senior Vice Chairman Shahbaz Aslam said that the most serious threat to the economy in the current fiscal year is the inflation, as the government plan of approaching the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance has brought a fresh wave of price-hike, because inflation is already hitting due to continuous raise in oil prices and depreciation of local currency.
\nHe predicted that inflation would remain high and may even increase further due to market frictions caused by relative demand and supply gap of essential items, exchange rate depreciation and recent upward adjustment of administered prices of petrol and diesel. He said that due to the lagged effect of floods, production losses, especially of major agriculture crops, has not yet been fully recovered. Consequently, the shortage of essential items has emerged and persisted. Inflation may further jack up as a result of second round effect.
\nShahbaz Aslam said the IMF loan would have devastating effects on the economy, as with more taxes and increased rates of utilities, cost of production would further increase. This will render Pakistani exports uncompetitive in the global market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD The Ferozepur Road Industry Association (FRIA) has warned the high cost of doing business would hurt economic growth, demanding a careful policy to keep it in control, as Pakistan\u2019s inflation reading ticked up 0.11% in the week ended July 11, 2024 compared to the previous week, fueled by the hike in food prices, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\n