LAHORE: The Ramazan-specific price hike has started taking its toll on general public even before formal start of the holy month on Monday and common man, already crushed by general hyper-inflation, may find life being squeezed out of him.

During the last 24 hours, all those fruits and vegetables that see their consumption rising during the holy month, have seen their prices multiplying. Dates, one of the basic components of Iftar, has seen its price doubling - from Rs400 to Rs800 per kg.

Even basic vegetables like potato, onion and tomatoes have spun out of common man’s reach if the market trends are to be trusted and wholesalers warn they might become expensive as demand go further up during the next week or so. Potato price, which had been stable around Rs60 to Rs70 per kg for the last few weeks, has risen to over Rs120 in the last 24 hours. Similarly, tomato is Rs220 per kilo instead of Rs100 till Saturday. Onion’s prices started rising a month ago and the government clamped down on export and was keeping prices around Rs100 per kg, has now gone up to Rs300 per kilo.

Fruits have also seen the similar trend, as ‘fruit chaat’ is the most common and favourite dish at Iftar. Banana has seen doubling of price – from Rs150 to over Rs300 per dozen. So is the case of melon and muskmelon, which now costs Rs200 per kg instead of Rs120.

“Capturing market inflation in words is a risky job,” explains Shoaib Ahmad – a wholesaler in a major market of Lahore. It varies wildly from locality to locality; differs between different times of the day. In fact, it is totally chaotic when it comes to retail sector, which has no relation with the wholesale market. It is not to suggest that wholesale markets are cleaner, but only point out that the retail side of vegetables and fruits is more of a matter of trick: how much a seller can trick his buyers into buying at what rate. Unfortunately, it is all happening at the cost of commoners. To them, everyone in the business is dirty exploiter. The government needs to clean the supply chain if it wants to provide some relief to people in the country or province, he says.

Suggesting ways to clean the retail sector, a former head of Ravi Road Fruits and Vegetable Market says wholesalers are easy to control, for they are far less in number and lift commodities from three or four major markets. At the retail level, the city, or Punjab, the government should organise smaller markets in different areas of the city, register sellers, allocate them spaces in those markets and have a monitoring system. Currently, there are no area markets, no registration or monitoring. Police, city government officials and traffic police all exploit those having carts at better positions and fiscal cost of all this gratifications is shifted to common man.

The city government can actually make money by organising area markets and have efficient control as well. Dozens of suggestions and plans have been shelved in official shelves. until such steps are taken, the government would stay helpless and people would suffer at the hands of exploiters, who are countless in the system, he says.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2024