With the state reeling from the perils of recent devastating floods and the continued disability of the authorities to curb hoarding, smuggling and fiscal imbalances has given the common man yet another blow – food inflation! Not being able to tax the elite and questionable appropriations by the authorities have done nothing but to aggravate the situation while CPI rose to 15.71 percent this September.
Writer of the article asserts that the causes of food inflation, which rose from 21 to 24 percent this September, are not just floods, hoarding and smuggling but there are number of other reasons like mismanagement, misappropriations and carelessness. The first and the foremost cause is the continuing fiscal imbalance because of poor tax collection and misappropriations of funds example of which is the recent expenditure of Rs30 billion on reinstatements of 9, 000 PPP supporters in SOEs all over the country, cooperative societies and bullet proof vehicles for NA employees. Monetary policy, being another reason for this high inflation, continues to take inconsistent steps resulting in unwanted outcomes. While the whole world is recovering from recession, states are slashing down the interest rates to encourage investment. On the contrary our state caused an upsurge in the interest rate thence the negative fallout on productivity. Rise in electricity tariff has also not done anything fancy as there are no improvements in the load shedding situation for two and a half years.
The right thing to do at this time is to focus on management issues rather than looking outwards for aids and grants. The state authorities need to take effective remedial measures to rectify the shortcomings in fiscal and monetary department as well as the private sector.
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