![\"'Inflation](\"https:\/\/c.ndtvimg.com\/2023-02\/0tj0jhis_pakistan-market_625x300_01_February_23.jpg\"\/ "\\"'Inflation")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\nKarachi: <\/b><\/p>\n
Inflation has risen to a 48-year high in crisis-hit Pakistan, where the International Monetary Fund is visiting for urgent talks, according to data released on Wednesday by the country’s statistics bureau.<\/p>\n
Year-on-year inflation in January 2023 was recorded at 27.55 percent, the highest since May 1975, with thousands of containers of imports held up at Karachi port.<\/p>\n
Pakistan’s economy is in dire straits, stricken by a balance of payments crisis while it attempts to service high amounts of external debt.<\/p>\n
The world’s fifth-biggest population has less than $3.7 billion in the state bank — enough to cover just three weeks of imports.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, an IMF delegation arrived in Islamabad to revive negotiations over a stalled bailout package with the government, which has so far held out from meeting the global lender’s tough conditions.<\/p>\n
But in recent days, with the prospect of national bankruptcy looming and no friendly countries willing to offer less painful bailouts, Islamabad has started to bow to pressure.<\/p>\n
The government loosened controls on the rupee to rein in a rampant black market in US dollars, a step that caused the currency to plunge to a record low. Artificially cheap petrol prices have also been hiked.<\/p>\n
The state bank is no longer issuing letters of credit, except for essential food and medicines, causing a backlog of thousands of shipping containers at Karachi port stuffed with stock the country can no longer afford.<\/p>\n
‘One cannot earn enough’<\/strong><\/p>\n Industry has been hammered by the imports block and massive rupee devaluation. Public construction projects have halted, textiles factories have partially shut down and domestic investment has slowed.<\/p>\n The National Consumer Price Index for January 2023 rose by 2.88 percent from the previous month, the figures released on Wednesday showed.<\/p>\n In downtown Karachi on Monday, dozens of day labourers including carpenters and painters waited with their tools on display for work that never comes.<\/p>\n “The number of beggars has increased and the number of labourers has decreased,” said 55-year-old mason Zafar Iqbal, who was eating biryani from a plastic bag donated by a passerby.<\/p>\n “Inflation is so high that one cannot earn enough.”<\/p>\n Former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was ousted last year in a no-confidence motion, negotiated a multi-billion-dollar loan package from the IMF in 2019.<\/p>\n But he reneged on promises to cut subsidies and market interventions that had cushioned the cost-of-living crisis, causing the programme to stall.<\/p>\n It is a common pattern in Pakistan, where most people live in rural poverty, with more than two dozen IMF deals brokered and then broken over the decades.<\/p>\n (This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\nFeatured Video Of The Day<\/h3>\n