The Federal Minister for Planning and Development and Special Initiatives chaired the best high -ranking meeting on Thursday, with a focus on stabilizing basic commodity prices and launching a national brand strategy to enhance economic expectations in Pakistan.
At the first meeting, the Pakistani Statistics Office (PBS) reported a sharp decrease in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), which decreased to 0.7 % in March 2025 from 20.7 % in the previous year – in recent years. According to PBS, inflation in rural areas reached 0 %, while urban inflation recorded a slight increase of 1.2 %, due to a large extent to low food prices. Despite this improvement, basic inflation remained 8.2 % in urban areas and 10.2 % in rural areas.
Iqbal welcomed the decline as a positive development, but he warned of self -consent, especially during high consumption periods such as Ramadan and Eid. He expressed concern about the recent fluctuation of prices in commodities such as chicken, onions, potatoes and bananas, and ordered the Ministry of Security and National Research to promote frozen poultry as a choice of stability. He also called for the efforts made to increase the production of tomato paste and evaluate price differences in urban areas in Islamabad.
In addressing deeper structural issues, the minister highlighted the lack of institutional frameworks for the main agricultural commodities. He called for the creation of a national oil panel for eating, improving the infrastructure of the cold chain, and the strategy of improving lands to align crops with demand and import needs. PBS has also provided data on large retailers-more than 100 % in some cases-especially for onions and potatoes in Karachi and Kuwait. The region’s administration in Islamabad, the capital (ICT), requested the retail seller lists from a TV program to take enforcement measures.
In a separate session, Iqbal met with the chief executives and strategists of the brand and industry leaders to discuss the global image of Pakistan. As part of the “National Economic Transformation Plan” in Pakistan National “, it announced a national strategy aimed at putting Pakistan as a trillion dollars economy by 2035. Plans were also shared to establish a national center for the development of the brand (NCBD) to promote products” made in Pakistan “and support small and medium companies.
Iqbal said: “Our national trademark must reflect Pakistan’s culture, innovation and spirit of entrepreneurship,” and urged citizens to absorb the image of the country at home and abroad.
