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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s monthly inflation dropped to 1.5 percent in February on a year-on-year basis, the country’s statistics bureau said on Monday, which was the lowest in more than nine years.
The consumer price index (CPI) inflation stood at 2.4 percent in the month of January and 23.1 percent in Feb. 2024, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
On a month-on-month basis, it decreased by 0.8 percent in February as compared to an increase of 0.2 percent in the previous month and no change in February 2024. This was down from a multi-decade high of around 40 percent in May 2023.
“The lowest inflation last time was nine years and five months ago in September 2015, when it reached 1.3 percent,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said at a press conference on Monday, hailing a decline in policy rate to 12 percent.
The commodities whose prices increased from corresponding month of the previous year included pulses, potatoes, fresh fruits, butter, honey, milk powder, meat, vegetable, ghee, fish, milk products, cooking oil and sugar, according to the PBS.
The items whose prices decreased in Feb. included onions, tomatoes, wheat flour, tea, eggs, rice, bakery and confectionary items, and chicken.
 

QUETTA: A paramilitary troop was killed and four others injured after a woman suicide bomber hit a convoy of the Frontier Corps (FC) paramilitary force in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, a local administration official said on Monday.
The attack took place in Balochistan’s Kalat district on Monday afternoon, when the FC convoy was en route to security forces’ mess from the FC Fort on N-25 Quetta-Karachi highway, according to Kalat Deputy Commissioner Bilal Shabbir.
“A female suicide bomber struck the security forces convoy killing one soldier of the paramilitary Frontier Corps on the spot and injuring four others who were shifted to hospital,” DC Shabbir told Arab News.
“The female suicide bomber was standing outside the FC fort located at the highway and detonated herself when they were moving from the fort to the security forces’ mess in Kalat.”
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which has previously used woman fighters in its ranks to carry out suicide attacks against Pakistani security forces and Chinese nationals over the last few years.
In 2022, Shari Baloch, a woman suicide bomber linked to the BLA, carried out a suicide attack that ripped through a passenger van, killing three Chinese nationals and a Pakistani in the southern port city of Karachi, according to Pakistani authorities.
In Nov. last year, Pakistani officials arrested a woman among three suspects involved in a deadly suicide bombing, also claimed by the BLA, that killed two Chinese nationals and a Pakistani man outside the Karachi airport on Oct. 6, 2024.
The BLA is one of the most prominent separatist groups, which mainly operates in Balochistan but has targeted Chinese nationals in the neighboring Sindh province as well.
Balochistan has for years been the scene of an insurgency, where separatist groups have frequently attacked police and security forces as well as civilians and foreigners they see as “outsiders” in the resource-rich region, where China has been building a deep-sea port in Gwadar on the Arabian Sea and has made huge investments under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The separatists accuse Islamabad of exploiting the province’s natural resources. Successive Pakistani governments deny the allegations and say they have prioritized Balochistan’s development through investments in health, education and infrastructure projects.