KARACHI: Pakistan’s consumer inflation rate slowed to 4.1% year on year in December, the statistics bureau said on Wednesday, the lowest in more than 6-1/2 years.
The South Asian country is navigating a challenging economic recovery path buttressed by a $7 billion facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) granted in September.
Consumer prices in December rose 0.1% from the month before, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
In its monthly report released last week, the finance ministry said that the annual inflation rate was expected to hold in the range of 4-5% in the final month of the year.
Annual inflation had already slowed to 4.9% in November, largely due to a high base a year earlier, coming in below the government’s forecast and significantly lower than a multi-decade high of around 40 percent in May 2023.
“Inflation has come down on the back of stable currency, lower global commodity prices and improved supply chain,” said Samiullah Tariq, head of research and development at Pak Kuwait Investment Company.
Pakistan’s central bank previously targeted 5-7% inflation in the medium term but its head has said the level is now in sight within the next 12 months.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) cut its key policy rate by 200 basis points to 13% in December, the fifth straight reduction since June, to bring cumulative rate cuts for 2024 to 900 basis points and making it one of the most aggressive emerging market central banks in the current easing cycle.
Inflation during the first half of the current fiscal year to end-June 2025 has averaged 7.22% compared to 28.79% in the year-earlier period.

ISLAMABAD: A village in Pakistan’s populous Punjab province, the birthplace of former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, mourned his passing during a vigil held on Tuesday, according to Reuters, following his death last week.

Gah village, located about 100 kilometers southwest of Islamabad in Pakistan’s Chakwal district, was Singh’s hometown, where he was born on Sept. 26, 1932.

Singh, an economist and the first Sikh to serve as India’s prime minister, passed away on Dec. 26 at the age of 92. His family migrated to India after the partition in 1947. The late Indian prime minister’s father, Gurmukh Singh, was a cloth merchant, and his mother, Amrat Kaur, a homemaker.

Despite his humble beginnings, Singh studied at Oxford and Cambridge, earning recognition as a scholar before spearheading economic reforms that lifted India out of a financial crisis in the early 1990s.

“When he [Manmohan Singh] became [India's] prime minister, the whole village erupted with joy and celebrated,” said Malik Haq Nawaz Awan, a resident of Gah, speaking in Punjabi. “In the same way, there was an environment of sorrow [over his passing]. Everyone was sad.”

The local school, where Singh received his early education, holds a special place in the village. The late Indian premier’s roll number was 187, and his admission date, April 17, 1937, is still recorded in the school register.

Villagers credit the school’s renovation and the development of their settlement to Singh’s success. His rise to prominence in the neighboring country made the people of Gah proud, and his death has left a profound void.

“I belong to this village as well, and the proudest thing for me is that Singh was my father’s classmate,” said Altaf Hussain, head of the Government Primary School in Gah. “When I went to school, I’d see his name in the records. Every time I saw ‘Manmohan Singh’ in our school records, I felt happy and proud knowing that a child from our small village, who studied on the ground, became India’s prime minister and managed its economy.”

Another villager, 65-year-old Raja Abdul Khaliq, recalled inviting Singh to visit the village, though the Indian premier could not make the trip.

“His family remains, and we invite them to visit us,” he said. “Whenever they come, they’ll find in this village a home away from home. We’ll welcome them with open arms, and our hospitality will be etched in history all thanks to him because of the debt of gratitude our village owes him.”

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has faced criticism in Indian media for not condoling Singh’s death. However, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar expressed grief over Singh’s passing, praising his leadership for prioritizing dialogue and mutual understanding to address regional issues, which improved ties between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

In 2019, Pakistan’s former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi invited Singh to attend the opening ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor, but he was unable to join. In 2012, President Asif Ali Zardari and Singh met in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, describing their meeting as friendly and constructive.

Relations between the two countries have been fraught for years, with visits by senior officials to each other’s nations remaining rare. The two neighbors have fought three wars, two of them over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.