Pakistan posts highest-ever inflation in March - statistics bureau

(Updates with details) ISLAMABAD, April 1 (Reuters) - Consumer price inflation in Pakistan accelerated to a record 35.37% in March from a year earlier, eclipsing February's 31.5%, the statistics bureau said on Saturday. A spokesman said the number was the highest ever year-on-year increase recorded by the bureau since monthly records began in the 1970s. "This is the highest ever inflation recorded in the data we have," the spokesman said.

Consumer price inflation in Pakistan accelerated to a record 35.37% in March from a year earlier, eclipsing February's 31.5%, the statistics bureau said on Saturday. A spokesman said the number was the highest ever year-on-year increase recorded by the bureau since monthly records began in the 1970s.

"This is the highest ever inflation recorded in the data we have," the spokesman said. The consumer price index was up 3.72% in March from the previous month, it said.

Higher prices of food, cooking oil and electricity pushed up the index, the bureau said. The South Asian nation has been in economic turmoil for months with an acute balance of payments crisis while talks with the IMF to secure bailout funding have stalled.

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