KARACHI: Irrespective of the rise in income of people during the last 20 years – it seems that the meteoric rise in essential items’ prices has nullified the impact of rising income.
Market people lament the government for not taking any appropriate measures for increasing the production of essential items with respect to demand triggered by the rising population. As a result, imports have been opened during the last few years to meet the demand and supply gap in vegetables, sugar, wheat etc.
Market players, taking oil prices hike as a pretext, have been pushing up the rates of essential items owing to increasing transportation cost.
On the other hand, the government departments, responsible for regulating the market prices and checking artificial hike, have not played their due role and ultimately the consumers have to bear the brunt of their negligence in shape of price hike. For the last many years, the governments have been active in the markets through price checking campaigns but so far their efforts have virtually failed in bringing any stability in the rates. Instead, consumers have been paying more despite price checks. Without having a data of import, local crop situation, markets stocks, etc. price checking campaigns have been launched.
Market players of essential commodities have been playing their games of fleecing the consumers. They know that the government comes out with a crusade against price check with a bang to show sympathy with the consumers and to increase volume of amount recovered from retailers as fine but in real terms no results have been achieved so far. General Manager (commercial and technical) Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL) Aftab Husain said rising oil prices in world markets have played havoc in the domestic oil prices as Pakistan’s crude oil production ranges between 60,000-65,000 barrels a day for more than a decade, which constitutes only 15 per cent of total oil requirement in the country.
Pakistan is currently importing 4.5 million tons per annum of diesel against the total requirement of 7.5 million tons, while the rest is met through local production. The total import bill has risen from $4.5 billion to $6.5 billion in the last two years, he said.Oil prices in global markets have been increasing due to high demand, particularly from India and China, better economic performance in the USA and geo-political scenarios in the last five years, Aftab added.
General Secretary Karachi Retail Grocers Group (KRGG), Farid Qureshi said that production of various items in the country had increased but it has not matched with the rising demand triggered by population rise in the last 20 years. He said cost of production of companies has surged due to rising oil prices.
President All Karachi Milk Retailers Welfare Association M. Nisar said that milk price had risen due to government’s apathy towards the development of dairy farming industry. Besides, demand has increased but local production is not sufficient to cope with it. Cost of milk production has risen due to increase in prices of ingredients. — ASK
