Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: The weekly inflation, detected by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), recorded a slight decline of 0.09 percent for the combined consumption group during the last week ended on December 29, reported by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday.
According to PBS data, the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the week under review in the above-mentioned group, was witnessed at 217.20 points against 217.39 points during the previous week.
Similarly, the SPI for the combined consumption group in the week under review witnessed an increase of 29.30 percent as compared to the corresponding week of last year.
The Sensitive Price Indicator for the lowest consumption group up to Rs 17,732 recorded a 0.07 percent decline and moved down to 225.44 points against 225.59 points in the last week.
Inflation trends
Meanwhile, the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the consumption groups from Rs 17,732-22,888 and Rs 22,889-29,517 decreased by 0.12 percent and 0.03 percent respectively whereas it went slightly up by 0.02 percent for the consumption group from Rs 29,518-44,175 and decrease of 0.12 percent for consumption group above Rs 44,175.
During the week, in a total of 51 items, prices of 23 (45.10%) items went up, 07 (13.72%) items went down and 21 (41.18%) items remained unchanged.
The items which witnessed a decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week (wow) basis comprising potatoes (8.85%), tomatoes (6.02%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (1.47%) and 1 kg (0.45%), sugar (1.22%), cooking oil 5 liter (0.04%) and electricity for Q1 (2.44%).
PBS on Decreasing Items
Meanwhile, those commodities which witnessed an increase in their average prices comprising eggs (2.86%), rice basmati broken & wheat flour (2.81%) each, bread (2.76%), firewood (2.49%), LPG (1.61%), energy saver (1.27%) and item of bananas (1.18%)
On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the items that observed a decline in prices included chilies powdered (34.18%), electricity for q1 (13.96%), and Gur (1.38%).
The commodities that experienced an increase in prices on a year-to-year basis included onions (498.08%), tea packets (65.41%), diesel (65.05%), chicken (64.20%), petrol (52.19%), powdered salt (51.99%), eggs (49.11%), pulse moong (46.94%), bananas (45.06%), pulse gram (44.42%) and mustard oil (41.64%).
