ISLAMABAD
The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based inflation registered a downward trend for the second straight week ended on December 21 and decreased by 0.51 percent.
According to the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, inflation on a year-on-year basis increased by 42.60 percent during the week as compared to the corresponding period of the last year. Earlier, the inflation for the week ended on December 14 decreased by 0.06 percent.
The inflation for the week ended on December 21 for the lowest income group (Q1) witnessed a decrease of 0.39 percent, while it went up by 35.13 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same group.
For the other four income groups, the weekly inflation decreased from 0.39 percent (Q3) to 0.59 percent (Q5), while it went up from 40 percent (Q2) to 46.40 percent (Q3) on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
According to the PBS, the combined index was at 310 on December 21, 2023 as compared to 311.58 on December 14, 2023, while the index was recorded at 217.39 a year ago on December 15, 2022.
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 2015-16100 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 18 (35.29%) items increased, prices of 09 (17.65%) items decreased, and prices of 24 (47.06%) items remained stable.
The SPI for the current week recorded a decrease in the prices of items including potatoes (13.17%), petrol super (4.97%), diesel (4.68%), tomatoes (3.45%), sugar (1.16%), wheat flour bag (0.33%), chicken (0.13%), rice basmati broken (0.11%) and cooking oil 5-litre (0.07%).
On the other hand, a major increase was observed in the prices of items including eggs (10.42%), firewood whole (1.23%), onions (1.19%), pulse Moong (0.88%), pulse gram (0.79%), garlic & rice IRRI-6/9 (0.40%) each, pulse Masoor (0.30%), LPG (0.26%), bananas (0.19%), shirting (0.15%) and georgette (0.13%).
According to the PBS data, the year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 42.60 percent, including gas charges for Q1 (1108.59%), cigarettes (93.22%), chili’s powder (81.74%), wheat flour (78.80%), garlic (72.48%), rice basmati broken (62.52%), rice IRRI-6/9 (59.45%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%), tomatoes (56.89%), gents sandal (53.37%), sugar (50.33%) and gur (49.86%).
On a year-on-year basis, a major decrease was observed in the prices of onions (23.92%), mustard oil (4.24%), vegetable ghee 1-kg (1.59%), vegetable ghee 2.5-kg (0.62%) and bananas (0.06%).
