Daily Times

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based inflation inched up by 0.04 percent for the week ended on February 22, 2024.

Earlier, the weekly inflation fell by 0.78 percent in the preceding week. According to the data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, inflation on a year-on-year basis increased by 30.68 percent during the week ended on February 22, 2024 as compared to the corresponding period of the last year.

The inflation for the week ended on February 22, 2024 for the lowest income group (Q1) witnessed a decrease of 0.08 percent, while it went up by 25.53 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same income group. For the other four income groups, the weekly inflation remained between -0.03 percent (Q2) to +0.09 percent (Q5), while it went up from 28.22 percent (Q5) to 35.39 percent (Q3) on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

According to the PBS, the combined index was at 315.31 on February 22, 2024 as compared to 315.18 on February 15, 2024, while the index was recorded at 241.29 a year ago on February 23, 2023. 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 23 (45.10%) items increased, prices of 8 (15.69%) items decreased, and prices of 20 (39.21%) items remained stable.

The SPI for the current week recorded an increase in the prices of items including tomatoes (22.71%), bananas (7.40%), diesel (3.02%), chicken (1.22%), petrol (1.00%), sugar (0.87%), mutton (0.86%), beef (0.74%), curd (0.71%), pulse Moong (0.54%), firewood (0.20%), and Georgette (0.14%).

On the other hand, a major decrease was observed in the prices of items including onions (14.42%), eggs (11.19%), LPG (1.82%), cooking oil 5-litre (0.75%), wheat flour (0.36%), mustard oil (0.33%), potatoes (0.23%) and vegetable ghee 1-kg (0.11%).

According to the PBS data, the year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 30.68 percent, including gas charges for Q1 (480%), tomatoes (199.93%), chili powder (81.74%), wheat flour (65.29%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%), gents sandal (53.37%), sugar (50.84%), gur (48.96%), salt powdered (39.97%), garlic (36.31%), and energy saver (34.17%).

On a year-on-year basis, a major decrease was observed in the prices of bananas (17.73%), vegetable ghee 1-kg (17.26%), mustard oil (15.98%), cooking oil 5-litre (13.66%), vegetable ghee 2.5-kg (12.02%), LPG (9.42%) and eggs (5.33%).