Daily Times

The weekly inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), went down by 0.26 percent for the combined consumption groups during the week ended on January 2, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported on Friday.

According to the PBS data, the SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group was recorded at 326.10 points as compared to 326.96 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 3.97 per cent.

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

The SPI for the lowest consumption group of up to Rs 17,732 witnessed decrease of 0.51 per cent and went down to 320.01 points from last week’s 321.65 points.

The SPI for consumption groups of Rs 17,732 to 22,888; Rs 22,889-29,517; Rs 29,518-44,175 and above Rs 44,175, declined by 0.59 percent, 0.28 percent, 0.10 percent and 0.10 percent respectively.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 18 (35.29%) items increased, 10 (19.61 percent) items decreased and 23 (45.10 percent) items remained stable.

The items, which recorded major decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week basis included tomatoes (13.48 percent), electricity charges for q1 (7.48 percent), potatoes (5.59 percent), pulse gram (0.34 percent), eggs (0.23 percent), garlic (0.21 percent), LPG (0.18 percent), wheat flour (0.09 percent) and pulse mash (0.05 percent).

The commodities which recorded major increase in their average prices on week-on-week basis included chicken (10.28 percent), onions (4.93 percent), bananas (1.68 percent), diesel (1.18 percent), pulse moong (1.08 percent), sugar (0.95 percent), gur (0.58 percent), firewood (0.55 percent), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.53 percent), vegetable ghee 1kg (0.28 percent) and petrol (0.21 percent).

On-year basis, the commodities that witnessed decrease included wheat flour (36.12 percent), onions (29.95 percent), chilies powder (20.00 percent), eggs (15.78 percent), electricity charges for q1 (13.92 percent), pulse masoor (11.24 percent), rice basmati broken (8.42 percent), diesel (6.39 percent), bread (6.01 percent), pulse mash (5.98 percent) and petrol (5.45 percent).