Chicken price surges in Karachi ahead of Eidul Fitr

KARACHI: The price of chicken recorded a major increase in Karachi along with other major cities of Sindh ahead of Eidul Fitr, ARY News reported.

Amid the increasing demand from the citizens, the profiteers were selling chicken meat at around Rs800 per kilogramme in Karachi as against the commissioner Karachi’s notified price of Rs666/kg.

The local administration’s campaign to facilitate the citizens fasting during Ramadan also failed as the profiteers continued to sell essential commodities on hiked prices throughout the month.

While the officially notified prices of chicken meat and live chicken were set at Rs666/kg and Rs428/kg, respectively, the citizens complained regarding the unavailability of the commodity on the official prices.

They decried a lack of government measures to control the profiteering and provide much-needed relief to the citizens during Ramadan.

Meanwhile, the weekly inflation measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), recorded an increase of 0.96 per cent for the combined consumption groups during the week ended on April 4, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported.

According to the PBS data, the SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group was recorded at 326.29 points as compared to 323.20 points during the past week.

As compared to the corresponding week of last year, the SPI for the combined consumption group in the week under review witnessed an increase of 29.45 per cent.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 16 (31.37%) items increased, 13 (25.49%) items decreased and 22 (43.14%) items remained stable.

The items, which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week basis included bananas (3.57%), wheat flour (2.68%), eggs and LPG (1.89%) each, diesel (1.18%), gur (0.63%), sugar (0.41%), mustard oil (0.26%), pulse masoor (0.25%) and potatoes (0.23%).

On a year-on-year basis, the commodities that witnessed decrease included ladies sandal (12.52%), tomatoes (11.93%), gents sandal (8.70%), petrol (3.45%), chicken (2.99%), long cloth (2.23%), onion (1.30%), bread (1.03%), beef (0.75%), garlic (0.70%), mutton (0.41%) and rice basmati broken (0.14%).