Pakistan 19th among states with highest inflation rate

LAHORE: With prices of goods and services surging throughout the world, mainly due to an unbridled hike in food and energy tariffs, Pakistan’s inflation rate has also soared to 26.6 per cent in October 2022 from 23.2 per cent in September, placing it at the 19th rank, along with Ukraine, among 184 nations where levels of dearness have been measured by institutions specialising in collecting and tabulating the Economic data.

Basically, driven by the monstrous coronavirus and then the still ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, energy inflation is pushing up the cost of living around the planet.

Since October 2020, an index of global energy prices—made up of crude oil, natural gas, coal and propane—has increased drastically.

Data available from various global sources like the IMF, World Bank and Bloomberg and the Visual Capitalist, which is one of the fastest growing online publishers globally, focused on topics including markets, technology, energy and the global economy through the power of visual story-telling, reveals that out of a set of 184 nations, India, Bangladesh, the impoverished Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan have experienced relatively comfortable inflation levels.

India has particularly done very well when it comes to the planning to control inflation.

With just 6.8 per cent inflation, India stands at 129th position, along with the United Arab Emirates, among the 184 countries under review, giving enough food for thought to the Pakistani economic wizards as to how a whopping population of 1.4 billion can be protected from the blunt and ruthless sword of soaring prices in a very difficult time,

Afghanistan stands at number 50 (inflation rate of 13.6% only) and Bangladesh is number 93 on the list with just 8.9 per cent inflation.

Nepal features at number 97 on this list with an inflation rate of 8.6% only.

The poor and tiny Bhutan has shown commendable guts by controlling dearness of daily-use items to 6.1 percent only, and secure the 140th position, meaning thereby that only 44 countries have done better than this nation on this front. The war-torn Iraq is at number 149 with an inflation rate of 5.3 per cent.

The resource-less Palestine, with inflation levels of 4.4 per cent, is at number 159.

Statistics reveal that 161 countries have done much better than Pakistan in harnessing the price hike.

Five countries have experienced a triple-digit inflation rates during 2022. These countries are: Zimbabwe (269%), Lebanon (162%), Venezuela (156%), Syria (139%) and Sudan (103%).

Countries with best inflation rates are: South Sudan (Minus 2.5%), Macau (1.1%), Panama (1.9%) and China (2.1%).

Here follows the list of countries with inflation rates higher than Pakistan:

Argentina (88%), Turkey (85.5%), Sri Lanka (66.2%), Iran (52%), Suriname (41.4%), Ghana (40.4%), Cuba (37.2%), Laos (36.8%), Moldova (34.6%), Ethiopia (31.7%), Rwanda (31%), Haiti (30.5%) and Sierra Leone (29.1%).

Hungary has 27th highest inflation rare (21.1%) along with Nigeria, Poland is at number 32 (17.9%), Egypt is number 39 (16.2%), Netherlands is 48th (14.3%), Russia has 57th highest inflation rate (12.6%), Belgium is at number 59 (12.3%), Italy is 67th (11.8%), United Kingdom is at number 70 (11.1%), Austria is at number 71 (11%), Sweden is at number 72 (10.9%), Germany is 75th on the list (10.4%), Denmark and Portugal at number 77 on the list (10.1%), Ireland is at number 87 (9.2%), Greece is 90th (9.1%), Finland, Morocco and Peru are at number 103 (8.3%), the United States with an inflation rate of 7.7% is at number 112, Norway, Singapore, South Africa and El Salvador are at number 114 with just 7.5% inflation, Australia and Spain are at number 119 (7.3%), Luxembourg is at 127th rank ( 6.9%), Brazil is 133th on the list (6.5%), France is 137th on the list (6.2%), Qatar and Thailand are at number 141 (6%), Indonesia, South Korea and Tajikistan are at number 144 (5.7%), Israel is at number 152 (5.1%), Malaysia is at number 157 (4.5%), Bahrain is 164th (4%), Japan is at number 165 (3.7%), and Saudi Arabia, along with Switzerland, is 171st on the list (3%).

A Western media outlet has viewed: “If history is an example, taming rising prices could take at least a few years yet. Take the sky-high inflation of the 1980s. Italy, which managed to combat inflation faster than most countries, brought down inflation from 22% in 1980 to 4% in 1986. If global inflation rates, which hover around 9.8% in 2022, were to follow this course, it would take at least until 2025 for levels to reach the 2% target. While the American Federal Reserve Bank projects the inflation in United States to fall closer to its 2% target by 2024, the road ahead could still get a lot bumpier between now and then.” This media house added: “As price pressures mount, 33 central banks tracked by the Bank of International Settlements (out of a total of 38) have raised interest rates this year. These coordinated rate hikes are the largest in two decades, representing an end to an era of rock-bottom interest rates. Going into 2023, central banks could continue this shift towards hawkish policies as inflation remains aggressively high. Compared to the 2021 average, natural gas prices in Europe are up six-fold. Real European household electricity prices are up 78% and gas prices have climbed even more, at 144% compared to 20-year averages.”

According to the IMF, the average global cost of living between January 2021 and end September 2022 had risen more than it did during the preceding five years combined.

Since the start of 2021, the average contributions just from food have exceeded the overall average rate of inflation during 2016-2020.

A September 21, 2022 report of Statista, a German company specializing in market and consumer data, most central banks have a target of low and constant inflation, generally between 1.5 and four percent per year.

According to Messrs Statista, whose platform contains more than 1,000,000 statistics on more than 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources and 170 different industries, which help it generate a revenue of about 60 million Euros annually, high inflation can lead to lower purchasing power, as prices tend to grow before wages, and those with savings or living on a fixed income see their buying power erode.

The company had added: “Hyperinflation, the extreme example of this phenomenon, can lead to total economic collapse as the currency loses value so quickly that it essentially becomes worthless. Negative inflation, commonly called deflation, is also a problem because the falling prices mean that companies and financiers are forced to save money, leading to decreased wages, layoffs, unemployment, and delayed investments.”