Daily Times

The weekly inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), witnessed an increase of 1.09 percent for the combined consumption group during the week ended on January 05, 2023, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported on Friday.

According to PBS data, the SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group, was recorded at 219.56 points as compared to 217.20 points during the past week.

As compared to the corresponding week of last year, the SPI for the combined consumption group in the week under review witnessed an increase of 30.60 percent.

The weekly SPI with the base year 2015-16 =100 is covering 17 urban centres and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups.

The SPI for the lowest consumption group up to Rs 17,732 witnessed a 1.13 percent increase and went up to 227.98 points from last week’s 225.44 points.

Meanwhile, the SPI for the consumption groups from Rs 17,732-22,888, Rs 22,889-29,517, Rs 29,518-44,175 and above Rs 44,175 increased by 1.23 percent, 1.21 percent, 1.19 percent and 0.98 percent respectively.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 23 (45.10%) items increased, 09 (17.65%) items decreased and 19 (37.25%) items remained stable.

The items which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week (wow) basis included potatoes (4.61%), eggs (1.31%), tomatoes (1.17%), LPG (0.85%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.71%), cooking oil 5 litres (0.32%), sugar (0.24%), vegetable ghee 1 kg (0.11%) and pulse masoor (0.05%).

The commodities which recorded an increase in their average prices included chicken (16.09%), rice basmati broken (5.16%), wheat flour (4.87%), rice irri-6/9 (3.45%), bananas (2.97%), onions (2.65%), bread (1.24%), salt powdered (1.07%) and pulse moong (1.02%).

On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the commodities that witnessed a decrease in prices included chillies powdered (22.98%), electricity for q1 (13.96%) and gur (1.11%).

Whereas, the commodities that witnessed an increase in prices on a YoY basis included onions (501.23%), chicken (82.50%), tea packet (65.41%), diesel (60.63%), eggs (50.51%), salt powdered (49.50%), petrol (48.21%), pulse moong (46.99%), rice basmati broken (46.17%), bananas (45.64%), wheat flour (45.35%) and rice irri-6/9 (43.11%).