ISLAMABAD
The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based inflation reversed a two-week decreasing trend and increased by 0.37 percent for the week ended on December 28.
According to the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, inflation on a year-on-year basis increased by 43.25 percent during the week as compared to the corresponding period of the last year.
Earlier, the inflation for the week ended on December 14 and December 21 decreased by 0.06 percent and 0.51 percent respectively.
The inflation for the week ended on December 28 for the lowest income group (Q1) witnessed an increase of 0.40 percent, while it went up by 35.75 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same group.
For the other four income groups, the weekly inflation increased from 0.35 percent (Q5) to 0.41 percent (Q2), while it went up from 40.74 percent (Q2) to 46.99 percent (Q3) on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
According to the PBS, the combined index was at 311.14 on December 28, 2023 as compared to 310 on December 21, 2023, while the index was recorded at 217.20 a year ago on December 29, 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 2015-16=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 15 (29.41%) items increased, prices of 09 (17.65%) items decreased, and prices of 27 (52.94%) items remained stable.
The SPI for the current week recorded an increase in the prices of items including onions (15.21%), chicken (4.76%), pulse Moong (2.90%), pulse gram (2.89%), sugar (1.35%), bananas (1.05%), pulse Masoor (0.78%) and pulse Mash (0.54%).
On the other hand, a major decrease was observed in the prices of items including potatoes (8.66%), tomatoes (1.01%), vegetable ghee 2.5-kg (0.61%), cooking oil 5-litre (0.44%), eggs (0.40%), mustard oil (0.24%), gur (0.19%) and garlic (0.15%).
According to the PBS data, the year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 43.25 percent, including gas charges for Q1 (1108.59%), cigarettes (93.22%), chili’s powder (81.74%), wheat flour bag (73.81%), garlic (70.67%), tomatoes (65.26%), rice IRRI-6/9 (58.49%), rice basmati broken (58.47%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%) and sugar (54.25%).
On a year-on-year basis, a major decrease was observed in the prices of onions (12.57%), mustard oil (5.16%), vegetable ghee 1-kg (1.14%), and bananas (0.20%).
