ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), in its latest reports, revealed that weekly inflation, as measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), has risen by 0.93 percent for the combined consumption group during the week ending on September 21.
The PBS report released on Friday said that during this week, the SPI for this consumption group reached 281.77 points, compared to 279.18 points in the previous week. In comparison to the same week last year, there has been a significant increase of 38.66 percent in the SPI for the combined consumption group.
It’s worth noting that the weekly SPI, based on the 2015-16 =100 base year, encompasses 17 urban centers and tracks the prices of 51 essential items across all expenditure groups.
Specifically, for the lowest consumption group with expenditures up to Rs 17,732, there was a minimal increase of 0.05 percent, with the SPI rising from 284.66 points to 284.80 points compared to the previous week.
Analyzing the price movements of 51 items during the week, it was observed that 22 items (43.14%) saw price increases, 11 items (21.57%) witnessed price decreases, and 18 items (35.29%) remained stable.
Notable decreases in average prices on a week-on-week (WoW) basis were observed in items such as tomatoes (11.11%), sugar (3.57%), bananas (2.03%), potatoes (1.89%), wheat flour (0.77%), gur (0.62%), mustard oil (0.45%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.31%), cooking oil 5 liters (0.20%), pulse gram (0.18%), and tea packets (0.17%).
On the other hand, items that experienced an increase in their average prices on a week-on-week (WoW) basis included chicken (8.49%), garlic (5.19%), onions (3.02%), petrol (8.51%), diesel (5.54%), shirting (1.81%), and matchboxes (1.42%).
Looking at the year-on-year (YoY) comparisons, items such as tomatoes (26.98%), pulse gram (2.90%), and onions (2.00%) saw a decrease in prices.
Year-on-Year Inflation Comparison
Conversely, items that have witnessed an increase in their average prices on a year-on-year (YoY) basis include electricity charges for Q1 (118.16%), gas charges for Q1 (108.38%), cigarettes (94.69%), rice basmati broken (88.43%), chili powder (84.84%), sugar (81.98%), rice irri-6/9 (81.04%), wheat flour (73.70%), gur (72.86%), tea packets (65.28%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%), salt powdered (56.48%), gents sandals (53.37%), powdered milk (43.33%), and garlic (43.10%).
