March 13, 2007	Tuesday	Safar 23, 1428

ISLAMABAD, March 12: Led by almost 10 per cent increase in food inflation, the over all consumer prices jumped again to 7.39 per cent in February 2007 over the same month of the last year, Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) said on Monday.

In January 2007, the inflation had shown a growth of 6.64 per cent - the lowest during the current fiscal year - and the government had attributed this fall to its economic policies.

The rising inflationary trends had come even though President Pervez Musharraf had recently directed his economic team to curtail the rising price of commodities by ensuring uninterrupted supplies to provide relief to masses as this year is going to be an election year.

The statistics indicated that the inflation went up by 1.04 per cent in February 2007 over January 2007. This would be the highest ever increase in inflation over the previous month as it was only 0.33 per cent in February 2006 and 0.99 per cent in February 2005 respectively over the previous month.

Apart from the increase in food items, the education fee and medicare charges went up by 8.34 per cent and 9.32 per cent in February 2007 over the same month last year. This indicates that the charges of the basic facilities like education fees, books etc., and life saving drugs prices sky-rocketed thus affected the monthly budget of the poor people.

The upward growth in inflation during the month under review was mainly due to constant increase in price of kitchen items - fresh fruits, chicken, onions, potatoes and pulses - pushed up the food inflation to 9.99 per cent in February 2007 from 8.7pc in January.

The government had revised oil prices downward in the domestic market last month, which had also resulted into lowering the transportation cost and fares. With this the non-food inflation also witnessed steep decline during the month under review.

The FBS data showed that the inflation, however, increased by 8.04 per cent during the July-Feb period of the fiscal year 2006-07 over the same period of the last year.

The government found it very difficult to keep inflation below six per cent target despite the tight monetary policy being pursued by the State Bank.

Analysts said that inflation during upcoming months would further rise as supply of essential commodities like potatoes, onions etc., might decrease. The unprecedented increase in the liquefied petroleum gas and recent increase in electricity rates would also push up the overall inflation.

Prices of cloths increased by 6.17 per cent, house rent 6.27 per cent, household goods 7.49 per cent in the month of February 2007 over the same month of the last year.