KARACHI: In our country, the transportation cost is rising constantly and thus is unbearable. It has almost doubled over the years making the whole logistics, storage and supply chain circumference quite expensive; henceforth, advancing the circumstances of high transportation prices towards points of no return, said Ateeq ur Rehman, an economic and financial analyst.

He said the ballooning petroleum prices, growing energy costs and dilapidated road infrastructure have made transportation cost just towering.

He said this is hampering the cost of production by increasing the cost of doing business. It is helping the inflation to grow more and more, eventually influencing the poverty and making starvation to spread.

Ateeq said today food inflation is 46 percent and the main reason of its rise is overland transportation, which is a big impediment of inflating prices mostly for produced goods’ journey from farm to market or from industry to market: Eventually it is overland transportation’s accelerated cost.

He added that at this point of time, majority of the people are the prey of high cost of essential goods. If this continues with same speed by the passage of time almost two Crore people will further fall below the poverty line. He said with two million people continuing to be jobless, the unemployment ratio has elevated to 11 percent.

If we have to control our transportation prices at any cost, then the government should adopt “the Hybrid Economy Principals”, where private sector participates with public sector to control the uncontrollable situation of prices. In 1960s we have seen the participation of Hybrid Economy which has proved wonderful.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023