Inflation: Still harder days awaiting for most people

The figures provided by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) are often looked at with doubt. It is another institutional failure in Bangladesh that what the various government bodies say about the prevailing situations in different sectors is not always taken to be true. It is alleged the government for its own convenience publishes figures which do not match with reality. The general perception is to show that the government is successful; it manipulates reality and creates imaginary figures of socio-economic indicators.
One such manipulated thing, critics point out, is the figure of inflation. After the breakout of the Ukraine-Russia war, the country’s headline inflation jumped with experts in the field believing that this could be well in the double digit, but the BBA showed it in the single digit. In recent times, according to the BBS, the inflation hit the highest 9.5 per cent in August last year, in a decade. Then inflation eased a little but in February, the country’s overall inflation again moved upward to 8.78 per cent.
We are now in April. The headline inflation jumped further to 9.33 per cent in March due to the rise in both food and non-food prices, with the majority of the country’s people fasting. The BBS recorded the food inflation at 9.09 per cent on a 12-month point-to-point basis in the past month while the non-food inflation was 9.72 per cent for the same period.
Referring to these figures, the planning minister MA Mannan rather boastfully said, at a post-executive committee of the National Economic Council meeting press briefing on Tuesday the headline inflation was yet to reach double digits. ‘The rate is still below 10,’ he said, adding that the wage rate has increased slightly to 7.18 per cent in March. The minister, however, apprehended that inflation would go up in the coming months.
Put aside the debate on whether BBS provides correct figures, the prices of meat, fishes, vegetables, spices as well as education, health care, house rent and transportation have all gone beyond the capacity of most people. The common people do not bother about these figures, in fact most do not know whether these economic indicators exist at all. What they care for is if they are able to pass days with bare minimum in life which is now beyond their reach. If the planning minister’s apprehension that inflation would rise in the coming months becomes true, harder days are awaiting for most people.