The country, which even before this tragedy was facing an economic crisis and lacked foreign exchange, is now also facing a shortage of vegetables.
The floods, which have submerged a third of the country, have claimed more than 1,100 lives since the start of the monsoon in June and affected more than 33 million people.
More than $10 billion will be needed to repair the damage and rebuild damaged infrastructure, according to Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal.
These rains, “unprecedented for 30 years” according to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, destroyed or seriously damaged more than a million homes and devastated large swaths of agricultural land essential to the country’s economy.
Entire areas of the mountainous north and south, the country’s breadbasket, remain isolated as bridges and roads have been washed away by torrential waters.
“Everything is so expensive because of these floods that we can’t buy anything,” says Zahida Bibi, who came to buy vegetables at a market in Lahore, the big city in eastern Pakistan.
She had to give up products that she had put on her shopping list, because their price is now too high for her.
“What can we do? We don’t earn enough money to buy such expensive things,” she laments.
Onions and tomatoes, common ingredients in most Pakistani dishes, are the hardest hit.
Their price each rose by 40% in a week, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
– Few customers –
On Monday, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said the government was doing all it could to stabilize food prices, including importing food from India, the region’s big rival.
“We have to consider bringing vegetables through the land border,” he told Geo News television.
“We have to do it because of the prices and the shortages that we are experiencing… Inflation has broken people’s spines,” he added.
But the government has acknowledged that nothing could grow next season in the flooded areas and expect to see prices continue to rise.
“Nearly 80 percent of the tomato crop has been damaged by the floods, and the onion supply has also been hit hard,” Shahzad Cheema, secretary of the Lahore Market Board, told AFP.
“These are basic products and ultimately it is the basic consumer who will be the most affected,” he added.
In a Lahore market, a vegetable vendor, Muhammad Owais, is struggling to find customers willing to pay current prices.
“Prices have increased so much (…) that many customers leave without buying anything,” he notes.
Pakistan was struggling with high inflation even before the floods, due to rising energy costs and a large balance of payments deficit.
The government regained some room for maneuver on Monday, when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to the resumption of a long-negotiated and essential financial support program for the country, and announced the release of an envelope of 1.1 billion dollars.
