Pakistan hit record high inflation of 38 per cent, bypasses Sri Lanka

While the inflation in India stands at 4.7 per cent in May 2023, Pakistan has broken all records and has the highest inflationary pressure in Asia.

Published on: Jun 2, 2023, 11:03:23 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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With Pakistan reluctant to satisfy the IMF conditionalities and staring at a sovereign default if financing program expires end-June, the Shehbaz Sharif government is between a rock and a hard place as the Islamic nation has recorded its highest inflation numbers since records were kept in 1957. Today, Pakistan has left Sri Lanka behind and has recorded the highest inflationary pressure in Asia at 38 per cent in May 2023. Inflation in Sri Lanka has come down to 25.2 per cent after Pakistan overtook Colombo in April 2023.

File photo on PTI instigated mayhem and violence in Pakistan on May 9 after the arrest of Imran Khan Niazi.

While Pakistan has always boxed way above its weight category, first due to support from the US in the past century and now China, and tried to compare itself with India, the inflation rate under the Narendra Modi government stands at 4.7 per cent, lowest since October 2021, and the food inflation is just 3.8 per cent. The food inflation in Pakistan is 48.7 per cent in May up from 48.1 per cent in April.

The Pakistan government’s negotiations with the IMF have got further skewed after IMF mission chief Nathan Porter went on record stating that he hoped that the current political crisis in Pakistan was resolved in line with the Constitution and the rule of law. This statement was slammed by Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, who found Porter’s statement tantamount to meddling in political affairs of Pakistan. Minister Asif took umbrage to Porter commenting on domestic politics of Pakistan rather than giving the much required USD 1.1 billion-dollar loan to the Islamic nation.

While the Pakistani leadership feels that mentor China will come to its financial support if the economic situation goes south due to no IMF board meeting this month, the crisis in the Islamic nation is far deeper than what appears with the nation being polarized by May 9 mayhem and violence by PTI chief Imran Khan Niazi’s supporters. Due to Niazi’s continuous attacks on the Pakistan Army establishment, the general public doubts even the capacity of Rawalpindi GHQ to stem the deep rot within as the Army itself was found divided on May 9 with the PTI supporters torching the Jinnah House residence of the powerful Lahore Corps Commander. With Pakistan judiciary, political leadership and the Army pulling in different directions, the Islamic nation is on its knees with insurgencies rising in Balochistan, Sindh and Tehreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan targeting the armed forces in the heart of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

Rather than focusing on how to co-opt Kashmir, trigger Khalistan in Indian Punjab and create strategic space in Afghanistan, the Shehbaz Sharif government should get its act together and focus internally to arrest Pakistan from hitting the rock-bottom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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