KARACHI: People are paying more for less electricity in Pakistan. Despite public outburst over frequent power failures, the suppliers kept increasing the prices, reveals State Bank’s Inflation Monitor (June 2014).

Among the top 15 contributors to CIP inflation, electricity was the biggest contributor after education which was slightly higher.

The electricity contribution to CPI in June 2013 was zero while in June 2014, it rose to 15.82 per cent.

This massive increase in the electricity prices in the first year of the newly-elected government could not resolve the problem of load-shedding despite the fact that the prior to elections, the government had promised that it would resolve the electricity problem in the country.

While the contribution in CPI has been rising, the electricity theft has risen and recovery has significantly dropped despite increased prices of this commodity.

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How fast non-food inflation has been hitting the consumers was visible from the report which showed that the weighted contribution of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels in the CPI was just 3.84pc in June 2013. The weight of these commodities jumped to 29.57pc in CPI of June 2014.

The high non-food inflation played a key role in increasing poverty which particularly hit the middle and lower middle class, and widened the gap between the houses built and houses needed.

Surprisingly the weight of food items in the CPI has been declining fast whiles the people are experiencing higher food prices. The continued high core inflation is also one of the reasons for its greater weight in the CPI inflation.

According to the SBP report, the contribution of food in CPI inflation was 55.58pc in June 2013 while it fell to 37.67pc in June 2014.

According to State Bank, a new method of permanently excluding relatively volatile commodities from CPI basket in Pakistan has been developed by SBP.

This is achieved by making use of trimming approach on past data on monthly CPI changes to isolate a Relatively Stable Component of CPI (RSC-CPI) as a new measure of core inflation.

This method ensures inclusion of both food and non-food commodities that show persistent price behaviour in Pakistan.

*Published in Dawn, July 20th , 2014 *