ISLAMABAD: Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI)-measured weekly inflation increased by 1.37 percent for the total consumption group during the week ending March 9, according to data released on Friday by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
According to PBS data, the SPI for the week under review in the aforementioned group was 243.87 points as opposed to 240.57 points for the previous week. The SPI for the total consumption group in the week under review increased by 42.27 percent when compared to the corresponding week last year. The weekly SPI with the base year 2015–16 =100 covers 51 necessities for all expenditure groups across 17 urban centers. The SPI for the lowest consumption group up to Rs 17,732 witnessed a 1.62 percent decrease and went up to 248.90 points from last week’s 244.94 points.
Meanwhile, the SPI for the consumption group from Rs 17,732-22-888; Rs 22,889-29,517; Rs 29,518-44,175; and above Rs 44,175 witnessed an increase of 1.55 percent, 1.40 percent, 1.29 percent, and 1.71 percent respectively.
The items that recorded an increase in their average prices on a week-on-week (wow) basis included tomatoes (12.43%), potatoes (11.37%), onions (9.26%), sugar (5.48%), bananas (5.31%), cooking oil 5 litres (4.27%), wheat flour (4.06%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (4.01%), curd (1.89%), milk fresh (1.82%), tea packet (1.79%), rice basmati broken (1.24%), salt powdered (1.21%), lawn printed (2.00%) and shirting (1.45%). The items which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week (WoW) included chicken (6.73%), garlic (2.07%), pulse moong (0.83%), eggs (0.77%), pulse masoor (0.50%), LPG (0.26%), firewood (0.12%) and pulse gram (0.05%).
On a Year-on-Year (YoY) basis, the commodities that witnessed an increase in prices included onions (305.23%), cigarettes (165.86%), gas charges for q1 (108.38%), diesel (93.82%), eggs (78.63%), rice irri-6/9 (78.14%), petrol (77.89%), rice basmati broken (77.27%), bananas (74.01%), pulse moong (72.54%), tea packet (66.31%), pulse mash (56.02%), pulse gram (55.97%) and bread (55.36%). The commodities which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a YoY basis included tomatoes (41.79%), chillies powdered (7.42%) and electricity charges for Q1 (6.64%).
