Food inflation stood at 3 percent in December, ECC told

A meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet has been informed that food inflation with contribution of 1.1 percentage points and non-food inflation with 2.6 percentage points were major drivers of headline inflation in December, 2016.
Giving a briefing on review of key economic indicators, the ECC meeting, presided over by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, was informed that food inflation stood at 3.0pc and contributed 1.1 percentage points to inflation in December 2016, while non-food inflation was registered at 4.2pc and contributed to approximately 2.6 percentage points to Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation.
A regional comparison suggested that CPI registered Pakistan''s year-on-year inflation rate at 3.7pc in December, 2016, while in India it remained 3.6pc (November 2016), followed by Bangladesh by 5.4pc (November 2016) and Sri Lanka 4.1pc (November 2016).
Production in the Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) sector showed a growth of 2pc in July-October, 2016-17, as compared to 4.4pc during the same period last year. Production of automobiles, fertilizers, non-metallic mineral products, pharmaceuticals, rubber products, paper & board, electronics and iron and steel registered an increase, while wood products, chemicals, food beverages & tobacco, textile, engineering products, leather products and coke & petroleum products showed a decline.
On stock position, the meeting was told that the reported stock of wheat as on Jan 3, 2017 was 7.5 million tons showing sufficient quantity for daily releases to mills by provincial food departments and PASSCO. The total reported stock of sugar in the country as on Jan 5, 2017 stood at 1.47 million tons. The stock of various POL products averaged 34 days on Jan 10, 2017.
Export growth was decreased by 3.8pc and imports increased by 10.1pc thus trade deficit on year-on-year basis remained US$14.490 billion during July-December, 2016-17 as compared to the US$11.856bn in the corresponding period of last year.
The meeting was further informed that workers'' remittances received during July-December, 2016-17, amounted to US$9.459bn against US $9.688bn in 2015-16 and registered a decline of 2.4pc. Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA and UK are the largest sources of workers'' remittances. Gross foreign exchange reserves stood at US$23.183bn as on Jan 9, 2017 with SBP (US$18.292bn) and scheduled banks (US$4.891bn).
During July-November 2016-17, FBR tax collection stood at Rs 1074.8bn as compared to Rs 1039.0bn in the same period last year, thereby showing an increase of 3.4pc. Net Inflow of foreign investment during July-November (2016-17) stood at $.5bn.