Pakistan’s food-price crisis took an almost unbelievable turn on Tuesday when a faulty calculation inflated monthly food credits from Rs4,000 (about €12) to Rs14,800 (about €45) for 1.9 million households. The Federal Household Support Bureau halted new payments after merchants began redeeming the swollen balances, but billions of rupees in transactions had already been submitted for settlement.
The credits were meant to rise by 3.7%, reflecting a change in the bureau’s food-price index, as the government tried to ease weeks of complaints over flour, cooking oil and lentils. Instead, a software update treated 3.7 as a multiplier rather than a percentage, according to the bureau. The error hit the latest payment batch before staff stopped it on Tuesday afternoon.
How the credit multiplied
The payment engine should have added 3.7% to the Rs4,000 allowance, producing Rs4,148. Its calculation instead multiplied the base amount by 3.7. Bureau deputy director Adell Witting-Johnson said the team had detected “an impossible jump in redemption values” and switched off new credits at 16:20. Officials say 700,000 eligible households had not yet received this month’s payment.
The bureau said 410,000 households had used some of the inflated balance by the time the system was paused. Merchants have submitted Rs4.2 billion (about €12.7 million) in claims linked to the faulty credits, a figure the bureau is checking against shop receipts and transaction records. The total excess displayed across the affected accounts could reach Rs20.5 billion (about €62 million).
In Lahore’s Anarkali Bazaar, shopkeeper Amelia Arts said customers had arrived expecting the usual credit and left with flour, cooking oil and pulses for the week. Some returned later after payment terminals stopped accepting the food allowance. “People thought the higher balance was finally the help they had been promised,” she said.
“We cannot ask families to guess which number on their phone is real.” — Amelia Arts, shopkeeper
Families wait for a correction
The bureau said it would not reclaim money already spent on eligible food purchases, but would freeze remaining balances until the ledger was corrected. Witting-Johnson said a review of transaction records should take 72 hours, with corrected credits due to be issued by Friday. Merchants whose claims are validated will still be paid, she said.
That promise has not eased the immediate uncertainty for households that depend on the monthly allowance. Harraz Shankar, a public-finance researcher in Islamabad, said the government must publish a clear schedule for restoring the normal credit and explain how it will meet merchant claims. “A pause is not a correction,” he said. “People need to know when their next shop will work.”
The failure has landed during a wider dispute over the cost of basic goods, with traders reporting weaker sales and families cutting purchases to stay within tight budgets. The bureau’s index is used to adjust the allowance, but officials did not say whether the same calculation had been tested against earlier payment batches. They said no other month’s credits had been affected.
A cabinet finance committee is due to meet on Wednesday to review the halt and the settlement bill. The bureau said it would publish a corrected payment timetable after that meeting. For now, households and shopkeepers are left waiting on a system intended to soften rising prices — and a software fix that turned a small adjustment into a near fourfold credit.
