ISLAMABAD
The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation dropped by 1.37 percent after surging for four straight weeks.
According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, on a year-on-year basis, inflation decreased to 15.12 percent from 16.49 percent recorded a week earlier.
The weekly inflation for the lowest income group (Q1) witnessed a decrease of 0.99 percent, while it went 12.41 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same group. Overall for the other four income groups, the weekly inflation decreased from 1.12 percent (Q3) to 1.61 percent (Q4), while it went up from 13.51 percent (Q2) to 16.18 percent (Q5) on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
According to the PBS, the combined index was at 169.06 on March 17, 2022 as compared to 171.41 on March 10, 2022 while the index was recorded at 146.86 a year ago on March 18, 2021.
The SPI is computed on a weekly basis to assess the price movements of essential commodities at a shorter interval of time so as to review the price situation in the country. The SPI with base 2015-16=100 comprises 51 essential items and the prices are being collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country for all expenditure groups/quintiles and combined.
During the week under review, out of 51 items, prices of 29 (56.86%) items increased, prices of 09 (17.65%) items decreased, and prices of 13 (25.49%) items remained stable.
The SPI for the current week recorded a decrease in the prices of food items including tomatoes (12.04%), chicken (8.39%), garlic (2.04%), sugar (0.49%), potatoes (0.41%), pulse gram (0.31%) and pulse Mash (0.14%); and non-food items including electricity charges for Q1 (9.81%) and LPG (1.58%), with a joint impact of (-2.05%) into the overall SPI for combined group of (-1.37%).
On the other hand, an increase was observed in the prices of vegetable ghee 1-kg (6.25%), vegetable ghee 2.5-kg (4.56%), cooking oil 5 litre (3.62%), lawn (3.14%), shirting (2.57%), onions (2.06%), georgette (2.00%), cooked beef (1.98%), long cloth (1.82%), bananas (1.76%), match box (1.60%), eggs (1.39%), mustard oil (1.27%) and mutton (1.03%).
According to the PBS data, the year on year trend depicts an increase of 15.12 percent and the items whose prices increased included tomatoes (90.53%), LPG (73.18%), garlic (65.76%), mustard oil (58.57%), vegetable ghee 1 kg (55.16%), cooking oil 5 litre (50.75%), vegetable ghee 2.5-kg (49.90%), washing soap (39.17%), pulse Masoor (37.23%), petrol (33.42%), beef (24.84%) and diesel (23.75%), while a major decrease was observed in the prices of chillies powder (37.44%), pulse Moong (29.62%), eggs (18.49%), sugar (10.92%), potatoes (8.76%) and electricity charges for Q1 (0.16%).
