Daily Times

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation went down for the third week in a row by 0.07 percent.

According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, the SPI-based weekly inflation for the week ended on December 9, 2021 for the combined consumption group witnessed o.07 percent decrease, while it went 18.58 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

Earlier, the SPI-based weekly inflation for the weeks ended on December 2, 2021 and November 25, 2021 for the combined consumption group went down by 0.48 percent and o.67 percent, respectively.

According to the PBS, the combined index was at 167.24 on December 09, 2021 as compared to 167.36 on December 2, 2021 while the index was recorded at 141.04 a year ago on December 10, 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 19 (37.25pc) items increased, prices of 09 (17.65pc) items decreased, and prices of 23 (45.10pc) items remained stable.

The SPI for the current week recorded a decrease in the prices of tomatoes (13.37pc), chicken (10.59pc), potatoes (4.48pc), LPG (2.96pc), sugar (1.03pc), gur (0.51pc), wheat flour (0.46pc), mustard oil (0.27pc), and eggs (0.26pc), with joint impact of (-0.80pc) into the overall SPI for combined group of (-0.07pc).

On the other hand, an increase was observed in the prices of bananas (3.34pc), pulse Masoor (3.29pc), pulse gram (2.83pc), pulse Mash (2.78pc), pulse Moong (2.32pc), washing soap (2.19pc), onions (1.65pc) and match box (1.17pc).

According to the PBS data, the year on year trend depicts an increase of 18.58pc overall, with increase in electricity for Q1 (75.32pc), LPG (65.43pc), cooking oil 5-litre (61.26pc), vegetable ghee 1-kg (58.14pc), mustard oil (55.29pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (55.25pc), washing soap (45.85pc), petrol (44.35pc), diesel (34.93pc), gents sandal (33.37pc) and chillies powdered (33pc), while major decrease observed in the prices of onions (31.99pc), tomatoes (27.61pc), pulse Moong (25.03pc), potatoes (17.64pc), chicken (12.80pc) and eggs (6.28pc).

The weekly SPI percentage change by income groups showed that SPI across all quantiles decreased ranging between -0.02 percent and -0.14 percent. The lowest income group witnessed a weekly decrease of -0.14 percent while the highest income group witnessed a weekly decrease of -0.07 percent.

On a yearly basis, analysis of SPI change across different income segments showed that SPI increased across all quantiles ranging between 16.86 percent and 19.71 percent. Yearly SPI for the lowest income group increased by 19.71 percent while the highest income group recorded an increase of 19.07 percent.