Reeling under food and economic crisis, cash-strapped Pakistan is under tremendous stress owing to the high prices of essential food items. There has also been an unchecked hike on prices of milk, chicken and gas. According to reports, Live broiler chicken which has seen an increase of PKR 30-40 per kg in the last two days, taking the cost to Rs 480-500 per kilogram, reported Dawn. Earlier this month, the live bird was available at PKR 390-440 per kg while it was being sold between PKR 380-420kg in the last week of January, 2023.The chicken meat is now being sold at PKR 700-780 a kg which was PKR 620-650 per kg a few days ago. Boneless meat price hit a new peak of PKR 1,000-1,100 per kg, showing a jump of PKR 150-200 per kg in the same period.
Boneless poultry meat rate has crossed the price of boneless veal which is currently being sold at PKR 900-1,000 per kg, while meat with bones is selling at PKR 800-850 per kg.The spike in poultry prices has been attributed to the delay in opening fresh letters of credit for import of soya bean meal which is one of the main ingredients of poultry feed. The 50kg poultry feed bag is now tagged at PKR 7,200, up by PKR 600 in the last one month as the price of the poultry feed being made without soya bean is also going up.The price of loose milk has been increased to PKR 210 from PKR 190 per litre by some shopkeepers. Karachi Milk Retailers Association media coordinator Waheed Gaddi claimed that “over 1,000 shopkeepers are selling milk at an inflated rate. These are actually shops of wholesalers/dairy farmers and not ours members," while speaking to Dawn.Last month, Pakistan's weekly inflation rose to 31.83 per cent due to a massive increase in the prices of food items. According to local media reports, these 17 items have witnessed a multi-fold increase in prices YoY. The increase, as of January 2023 is - onions (482.07 pc), chicken (101.93 per cent), Lipton tea (65.41 per cent), eggs (64.23 per cent), diesel (57.34 per cent), Basmati broken rice (56.09 per cent), moong pulse (55.63 per cent), Irri rice-6/9 (50.28 per cent), powdered salt (49.50 per cent), bananas (47.73 per cent) and wheat flour (46.38 per cent).