ISLAMABAD: According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), short-term inflation based on the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) reached 45.64 per cent for the all income group on a year-over-year basis for the week ending March 16. A steady rise in the price of commodities drove this increase.
However, every week, the short-term inflation increased by 0.96 per cent as potatoes, tomatoes, cooking oil, and fruits became costlier.
The SPI is expected to intensify more as the complete impact of depreciation, increase in petroleum products, higher energy costs, and hike in general sales tax need to be reflected in official data. The commodity prices would show rapid growth with an increase in demand.
The yearly SPI surged to 45.5pc during the week ended on September 1, 2022. It remained above 40pc for the first time since August 18, when the reading was 42.31pc.
Of the 51 items in the SPI index, rates of 12 items remained unchanged, prices of 28 items increased while those of 11 items decreased.
During the under review week, the items whose prices soared the most over the same week a year ago were cigarettes (165.86pc), onions (233.89pc), gas charges for Q1 (108.38pc), tea Lipton (81.29pc), diesel (102.84pc), Petrol (81.17pc), rice basmati broken (78.10pc), rice irri-6/9 (78.75pc), bananas (77.84pc), eggs (72.19pc), bread (55.36pc), pulse moong (69.44pc), wheat flour (56.27pc).
On a week-on-week basis, the most significant change was observed in the prices of tomatoes (18.06pc), wheat flour (2.40pc), tea Lipton (9.26pc), potatoes (4.52pc), bananas (4pc), sugar (2.70pc), lawn (5.77pc), cooking oil 5 liters (1.20pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 Kg (1.16pc), diesel (4.65pc), Petrol (1.84pc) and shirting (2.80pc).
Items whose prices saw the highest decline over the last week were onions (15.91pc), eggs (2.26pc), chicken (5.97pc), garlic (5.73pc), pulse masoor (2.27pc), LPG (1.90pc), mustard oil (0.64pcvegetable ghee 1 Kg (1.39pc), pulse gram (1.24pc), pulse mash (1.08pc), and pulse moong (0.84pc).
To fulfill the International Monetary Fund demand, the federal government is taking harsh measures to shore up money to close the fiscal deficit, which could slow economic growth and increase inflation in the near future. These measures included increases in fuel and electricity prices, withdrawal of subsidies, a market-based exchange rate, and higher taxes.
Observers say retail prices of consumer products will rise further due to the policy rate’s increase to 20 per cent, the general sales tax rate’s increase to 18 per cent on most items and 25 per cent on more than 800 imported food and non-food items.
