Minister seeks report to ensure prevention of edibles’ profiteering, hoarding  

ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Minister for Planning Muhammad Sami Saeed on Tuesday sought a detailed report from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on the active usage of the Decision Support System on Inflation (DSSI) for price monitoring of edibles, checking profiteering and hoarding.

He passed these directives while chairing a meeting of the National Price Monitoring Committee (NPMC) to review the prices of essential commodities, a news release said.

One of the salient features of DSSI, which provides market-level information, city-wise comparison of prices, and time series data at the commodity level, is the comparison of rates issued by Deputy Commissioners and those collected by the PBS every week.

The minister also directed the Ministry of National Food Security and Research to engage with the Pakistan Poultry Association to identify and resolve the supply issues of poultry products.

Besides, he asked provincial governments and the administration of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) to vigorously pursue smooth availability of essential items, especially in the preview of the upcoming holy month of Ramazan, seeking report demand and supply situation of specific commodities used in the fasting month.

During the meeting, the PBS Chief Statistician presented an overview of the price situation in the country for the week ended on January 11, 2024, and apprised the meeting that the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) increased by 1.4 per cent over the previous week (WoW) and increased to 44.2 per cent over corresponding week the previous year.

He explained that the current spike in SPI was driven by perishable items including tomatoes, onions and poultry products like chicken and eggs.

During this week, he said prices of 21 items increased and eight items’ decreased while prices of 22 items remained stable.

The chief statistician said a decline was observed in the prices of food items such as potato, vegetable ghee and sugar. Whereas, the prices of tomatoes, onion, chicken, eggs and electricity observed an increase during the reference week.

The minister asked about the measures taken by the provincial governments and the ICT administration to curtail the gap between wholesale and retail prices.

In response, the representatives of the provincial Food and Industries Departments of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa explained that strict monitoring of prices had been ensured by imposing heavy fines, conducting raids and sealing the shops found involved in profiteering.