Daily Times

The prices of various food items went down during the week ending on November 18 as compared to the previous week, according to the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) Friday.

According to the data, the food commodities that witnessed a decrease in prices on Week-on-Week (WoW) basis included tomatoes and sugar, the prices of which declined by 5.77 percent and 4.25 percent respectively.

The other food commodities that witnessed decrease in prices included onions (2.14pc), gur (1.48pc), potatoes (1.36pc), pulse masoor (0.43pc), garlic (0.13pc), wheat flour (0.08pc), LPG (0.08pc) and pulse gram (0.02pc).

On a Year-on-Year (YoY) basis, the commodities that witnessed a decrease in prices during the week compared to the corresponding week of last year included onions (38.61pc), pulse moong (28.80pc), potatoes (26.55pc), tomatoes (6.34pc) and sugar (3.51pc).

On the other hand, the items that witnessed increase in prices on WoW basis included chicken (8.26pc), cooking oil five litre (4.72pc), bananas (4.18pc), washing soap (3.94pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (3.15pc), vegetable ghee 1 kg (2.38pc), rice Irri (1.76pc), pulse moong (1.62pc), eggs (1.52pc), fire wood (1.24pc) and tea prepared (1.21pc).

On YoY basis, the commodities that witnessed increase in prices included LPG (76.12pc),electricity for Q1 (75.32pc), vegetable ghee 1Kg (56.94pc), cooking oil five litre (56.28), mustard oil (55.42pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 Kg (52.94pc), petrol (44.35pc), diesel (40.21pc), washing soap (37.70pc) and chilies powdered (34.18pc).

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 27 (52.94pc) items increased 10 (19.61pc) items decreased and 14 (27.45pc) items remained stable.

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation for the week ended on November 18, for the combined consumption group, witnessed an increase of 1.07 percent as compared to the previous week.

The SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group was recorded at 169.29 points against 167.50 points registered in the previous week.

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

The Sensitive Price Indicator for the lowest consumption group up to Rs17,732 witnessed a 0.39 percent increase and went up from 178.35 points last week to 179.05 points during the week under review.

Meanwhile, the SPI for the consumption groups from Rs17,732-22,888; Rs22,889-29,517; Rs29,518-44,175 and above Rs44,175 increased by 0.53 percent, 0.91 percent, 1.06 percent and 1.44 percent respectively.