ISLAMABAD, Feb 21: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which has been out of government for over 10 years, will have to face the twin monster of food inflation and energy crisis.

“This crisis is the outcome of the inconsistent economic policies of the Musharraf-led government,” said former privatisation minister Naveed Qamar.

The ever-increasing prices resulting in an unprecedented food inflation will make the job of the PPP economic planners difficult to pacify consumers in the short term, but Mr Qamar said that in the medium term policy-cum-administrative measures would provide relief to consumers.

Mr Qamar said the party would have a clear policy to crack down on cartels, which had come into being as a result of economic policies of the previous government.

He said that the PPP had three options for dealing with the issue, but he avoided spelling them out.

“It is not appropriate to disclose them before the government formation,” he said.

“We will smash this cartelisation in various products from sugar to edible oil,” he said, adding that the priority of the PPP government would be to contain food inflation.

Besides cartelisation, he said, the past economic policies also encouraged hoarding of commodities.

Asked how difficult would it be to crack down on the cartels, Mr Qamar said the government would have to take some ‘hard decisions’. Without tackling the issue of cartelisation, he said, one should not expect any let-up in food prices.

He blamed the government’s policies for the shortage of wheat and rise in edible oil prices.

He said the foodgrain crisis occurred as a result of inconsistent policies of the previous government’s economic managers.

He said the government manipulated growth figures which, according to him, led to food shortages.

The supply constraints and inconsistent policies intensified the crisis, he said.

He said the core inflation -- non-food, non-energy – would also be tackled effectively.

He said that economic policies over the past two years were against businessmen.

High costs of oil for cars and heating homes are leaving people with less money for other necessities and prices for some other goods and services have also risen.

Analysts said the full-year inflation would be in the range of nine per cent to 10 per cent by end of June as against the projected target of 6.5 per cent.

Some independent economists have proposed to the new government to set up a commission with the status of a ministry to exclusively deal with the issue of foodstuff.

The mandate of the commission should be to deal with production, supply and prices of commodities.

The commission with the representation of all ministries and stakeholders and headed by the prime minister should be the final decision-making body and its decisions should be binding for all ministries.

The economists have also proposed an effective marketing strategy to ensure uninterrupted supply of food items to the market and re-constitution of food committees at the district or tehsil level to regulate prices.

The new government will have to take effective administrative measures to curb smuggling of commodities and launch a crackdown on hoarders, irrespective of their political affiliation.