ISLAMABAD
The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based inflation increased by 0.69 percent for the week ended on August 10.
According to the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, inflation on a year-on-year basis increased to 30.82 percent from 29.83 percent recorded a week earlier.
The weekly inflation for the lowest income group (Q1) witnessed an increase of 0.76 percent, while it went up 29.62 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same group. For the other four income groups, the weekly inflation increased from 0.57 percent (Q5) to 0.77 percent (Q4), while it went up from 27.46 percent (Q2) to 34.14 percent (Q4) on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
According to the PBS, the combined index was at 273.43 on August 10, 2023 as compared to 271.56 on August 3, 2023 while the index was recorded at 209.01 a year ago on August 11, 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 29 (56.87%) items increased, prices of 05 (9.8%) items decreased, and prices of 17 (33.33%) items remained stable.
The SPI for the current week recorded an increase in the prices of food items, including chillies powder (3.72%), powdered milk (3.65%), pulse Mash (3.13%), garlic (2.39%), sugar (2.30%), chicken (2.27%), salt (1.84%), eggs (1.74%), and non-food items, electricity for Q1 (1.75%).
On the other hand, a decrease was observed in the prices of vegetable ghee 1-kg (1.59%), LPG (0.79%), cooking oil (0.78%), mustard oil (0.48%) and vegetable ghee 2.5-kg (0.10%).
According to the PBS data, the year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 30.82pc, including wheat flour (131.81%), cigarettes (109.57%), gas charges for Q1 (108.38%), tea Lipton (95.19%), rice basmati broken (84.09%), chilies powder (72.94%), rice Irri-6/9 (72.74%), sugar (67.90%), chicken (65.87), gur (58.93%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%), potatoes (57.02%) and tomatoes (53.66%).
On a year-on-year basis, a major decrease was observed in the prices of onions (28.77%), electricity for Q1 (16.63%), pulse Masoor (16.04%) and vegetable ghee 1-kg (1.93%).
