Yet they may find it hard to pass price increases on to customers.
Mr. Aslam had to postpone plans to expand his warehouses and hire staff members and said he might be forced to pass price increases to his customers.
"There's substantial overcapacity, and for the manufacturers there has been no ability to pass price increases on to consumers," says David Cole, chairman of Ann Arbor, Michigan's Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization that does industry research and forecasts trends.
They pass price increases on to the consumer.
The collapse in the value of the pound is bad news for a country that imports 40% of its food and retailers will have to walk the tightrope of taking a hit on profits by absorbing price rises themselves, or passing cost increases on to price-sensitive shoppers.
"On the other end of the spectrum, consumer companies have a hard time passing along price increases on things like clothes because there's so much competition".
Gasoline in China is slightly cheaper than in the United States, as the government is gradually passing on price increases to consumers.
This paper presents and discusses direct and indirect transmission channels for price shocks, and firms' response measures: absorbing cost shocks into profits, inter-fuel substitution, increasing energy and material efficiency, and passing on price increases.
But the mere presence of inflation also suggests that many companies are successfully passing along price increases to customers, said Alan F. Skrainka, chief market strategist at Edward Jones, the brokerage firm based in St . Louis
Sara Lee posted a loss in its fiscal fourth quarter Thursday as it reduced the value of its bakery business, but analysts said that sales increases showed the food company was passing on price increases to consumers to offset rising commodity costs.
