Daily Times

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation for the week ended on September 30, 2021 for the combined consumption group witnessed a decrease of 0.10 percent, second in a row, as compared to the previous week, while it went 12.97 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, the combined index was at 157.04 on September 30, 2021 as compared to 157.19 on September 23, 2021 while the index was recorded at 139.01 a year ago on October 01, 2020.

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 comprises 51 essential items and the prices are being collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country. During the week under review, out of 51 items, prices of 20 (39.21pc) items increased, prices of 10 (19.61pc) items decreased and prices of 21 (41.18pc) items remained constant.

The SPI for the current week recorded a decrease in the prices of tomatoes (12.57pc), onions (6.75pc), bananas (3.67pc), wheat flour bag (2.33pc), sugar (1.73pc), gur (0.92pc), pulse Moong (0.71pc), chili powdered (0.57pc), pulse Mash (0.27pc) and pulse gram (0.26pc).

On the other hand, an increase was observed in the prices of LPG (2.27pc), potatoes (1.73pc) and garlic (1.61pc) with joint impact of (0.13pc) into the overall SPI for combined group of (-0.10pc).

According to the PBS data, the year-on-year trend depicts increase of 12.97pc with most of the items increased, mainly electricity for Q1 (57.92pc), LPG (55.16pc), vegetable ghee 1-kg (40.40pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (38.82pc), cooking oil 5 litre (38.06pc), mustard oil (37.87pc), chicken (36.97pc), chili powder (34.95pc), gents sandal (33.37pc), eggs (25.62pc) and gents sponge chappal (25.13pc), while a major decrease observed in the prices of tomatoes (50.52pc), pulse Moong (29.75pc), potatoes (26.69pc) and onions (21.66pc).

The weekly SPI percentage change by income groups showed that SPI across all quantiles ranged between -0.03 percent and -0.23 percent. The lowest income group witnessed a weekly decrease of 0.23 percent while the highest income group recorded a decrease of 0.03 percent.

On a yearly basis, analysis of SPI change across different income segments showed that SPI increased across all quantiles ranging between 11.91 percent and 15.00 percent. Yearly SPI for the lowest income group increased by 15 percent while the highest income group recorded an increase of 12.82 percent.