Pakistan's weekly inflation drops by 0.81 pc

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s weekly inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), decreased by 0.81 percent for the combined consumption groups during the week ended on May 29, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported on Friday.

According to the PBS data, the SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group was recorded at 309.80 points as compared to 312.34 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 0.41 per cent.

The weekly SPI with the base year 2015-16 =100 covers 17 urban centres and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups.

The SPI for the lowest consumption group of up to Rs 17,732 witnessed a decrease of 0.67 per cent and came down to 298.17 points from last week’s 300.18 points.

The SPI for consumption groups of Rs 17,732 to 22,888; Rs 22,889-29,517; Rs 29,518-44,175 and above Rs 44,175, came down 0.95 percent, 0.69 percent, 0.63 percent and 0.74 percent respectively.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 14 (27.45%) items increased, 10 (19.61%) items decreased and 27 (52.94%) items remained stable.

The items, which recorded major decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week basis included electricity charges for Q1 (10.10%), chicken (8.51%), LPG (2.67%), sugar (0.25%), powdered milk (0.20%), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (0.17%), wheat flour (0.09%), rice-irri-6/9 (0.07%), garlic (0.05%) and pulse moong (0.01%).

The commodities which recorded major increase in their average prices on a week-on-week basis included tomatoes (4.54%), potatoes (2.94%), eggs (2.19%), onions (2.17%), gur (0.77%), bananas (0.73%), mustard oil (0.34%), cigarettes (0.25%), pulse mash (0.22%), pulse gram (0.17%), pulse masoor (0.14%) and rice basmati broken (0.12%).

Year-on-year basis, the commodities that witnessed increase included , ladies sandal (55.62%), chicken (32.92%), eggs (32.30%), pulse moong (31.45%), powdered milk (23.75%), sugar (21.96%), bananas (21.17%), pulse gram (19.66%), beef (17.51%), LPG (16.30%), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (13.67%), and vegetable ghee 1kg (12.76%),

The commodities which recorded a decrease in their average prices on year-on-year basis included onions (55.56%), electricity charges for q1 (36.54%), potatoes (29.28%), garlic (26.51%), tomatoes (19.22%), tea packet (17.93%), pulse mash (17.50%), wheat flour (15.11%), petrol (7.43%) pulse masoor (7.42%), diesel (7.02%) and chilies powder (6.97%).