Consumers in Pakistan continue to experience major price shocks, as the cash-strapped country continues to experience one of the worst economic crises in the world. Prices of daily essentials such as milk, chicken, red meat etc have seen astronomical hikes over the past few days.
In India, chicken is priced at Rs 250 per kg on BigBasket and the rates are even lower in the open market. The online cost of milk starts from around Rs. 50 per litre. It can be obtained at lower rates offline. However, prices are doubled if one moves across the border.
The price of boneless meat, in our hostile neighbour, surged by Rs. 150–200 per kg during this time, reaching a new record of Rs. 1,000–1,100 per kg. While meat costs Rs. 800-850 for the same quantity, boneless poultry meat has surpassed the price of boneless veal, which is currently being offered for Rs. 900-1,000 a kg.
Spike in prices of Milk
Regarding loose milk, Waheed Gaddi, the communications coordinator for the Karachi Milk Retailers Association, asserted, “Merchants are selling milk at an inflated rate. These are not our members’ businesses, rather, they are those of wholesalers and dairy producers. Our 4,000 store members have maintained the pricing at Rs190 per litre,” he added.
Retailers will be required to charge consumers Rs. 220 per litre instead of Rs. 210 as per the revised rate calculation after an increase of Rs. 27 per litre in procurement price, Gaddi noted, if the price hike proposed by dairy farmers and wholesalers is not reversed.
On December 16, 2022, the commissioner of Karachi gave merchants a raise of Rs. 10 per litre so that they could sell milk at Rs. 180 per litre. However, the majority of shopkeepers continued to sell milk at Rs. 190 per litre, refusing the official rate. The authorized wholesale rate was also increased at that time from Rs. 160 to Rs. 170 per litre.
Waheed claimed that the association had notified the commissioner of Karachi on February 10 that, in flagrant violation of the Sindh High Court’s order regarding the mechanism for fixing the price of fresh milk, the association had been denied the chance to be heard while the prices were set via notifications on October 25, 2022, and December 16, 2022, despite a clearly observable increase in overhead costs of retail stores.
Retailers, he alleged, were still having trouble selling milk at a controlled rate after purchasing it at higher costs since they were still not receiving it at informed wholesale pricing.
Waheed maintained that only retailers had been targeted in order to enforce the application of official retail rates. “The Commissioner had not taken any action in this regard against the stakeholders,” he said.
According to him, dairy farmers increased the price once again on February 11 to Rs. 183 per litre from the official rate of Rs. 163 per litre that was issued on December 16, 2022.
He continued by saying that shops had two choices: either pay more for milk or quit buying and selling it altogether.
Poultry
As per Kamal Akhtar Siddiqui, general secretary of the Sindh Poultry Wholesalers Association, the wholesale price of a live chicken is Rs. 600 per kg, while the price of a kilogramme of meat is between Rs. 650 and Rs. 700. However, dealers set their own prices.
He reported that there were still issues with the port’s ability to clear soybean meal, one of the primary components of chicken feed. The price of a 50 kg bag of chicken feed has increased to Rs. 7,200 in the past month due to the price surge of soy-free poultry feed.
The delay in opening new letters of credit for the import of soya bean meal, he added, as well as the concern over the devaluation of the Pakistan rupee were both contributing to the volatility of chicken product pricing for customers in the upcoming months.
The federal, provincial, and local governments are not doing their fair share in protecting consumers from paying exorbitant costs for practically all food goods, allowing producers and traders to keep raising prices.
Customers feel that ‘both milk stakeholders and Commissioner of Karachi play hide and seek every time and carry short-term raids at retail shops to appease consumers, which are then halted.’
Pakistan is experiencing an unprecedented economic downturn. The country’s foreign exchange reserves fell to the lowest level since 1998 at roughly USD 3 billion, which is not nearly enough to pay a month’s worth of imports, and the rupee is at a record low. Inflation is also at an all-time high.
