The weekly inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), witnessed an increase of 1.37 percent for the combined consumption group during the week ended on March 09, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported on Friday.
The SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group was recorded at 243.87 points as compared to 240.57 points during the past week, according to PBS data.
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 42.27 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 1.62 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%).