ISLAMABAD
The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based inflation decreased by 1.28 percent for the second straight week ended on April 21 after dipping 0.68 percent in the previous week.
According to the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, inflation on a year-on-year basis decreased to 15.42 percent from 16.44 percent recorded a week earlier.
The weekly inflation for the lowest income group (Q1) witnessed a decrease of 1.62 percent, while it went up 12.94 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same group. Overall for the other four income groups, the weekly inflation decreased from 0.98 percent (Q5) to 1.86 percent (Q2), while it went up from 13.78 percent (Q2) to 16.48 percent (Q5) on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
According to the PBS, the combined index was at 171.05 on April 21, 2022 as compared to 173.27 on April 14, 2022 while the index was recorded at 148.20 a year ago on April 22, 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 19 (37.25%) items increased, prices of 10 (19.61%) items decreased, and prices of 22 (43.14%) items remained stable.
The SPI for the current week recorded a decrease in the prices of food items, including tomatoes (44.41%), wheat flour (8.16%), bananas (2.54%), potatoes (2.24%), sugar (0.82), garlic (0.77%), pulse Moong (0.51%), and gur (0.34%), and non-food items, including electricity charges for Q1 (5.44%) and LPG (0.22%) with joint impact of -1.73 percent into the overall SPI for combined group of -1.28 percent.
On the other hand, an increase was observed in the prices of onions (10.24%), chicken (1.82%), salt powdered (1.70%) and eggs (1.65%).
According to the PBS data, the year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 15.42 percent, including onions (101.18%), garlic (80.93%), LPG (80.45%), cooking oil 5 litre (58.14%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (57.72%), vegetable ghee 1 kg (56.45%), mustard oil (56.29%), tomatoes (47.41%), pulse Masoor (42.99%), washing soap (39.33%), petrol (37.42%) and diesel (29.63%).
On a year-on-year basis, major decrease was observed in the prices of chillies powdered (39.50%), pulse Moong (27.20%), potatoes (25.55%), eggs (13.80%), sugar (9.32%) and electricity charges for Q1 (4.37%).
