ISLAMABAD, July 27: Sensitive Price Indicator rose by 0.31 per cent during the week ending July 25 as compared to previous week, according to the price data released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics here Saturday.

The index of SPI, which includes 51 essential items consumed by households of different income strata, mounted to 107.05 at the end of the week. When compared with the corresponding week of previous year, the SPI registered an increase of 5.71 per cent.

The new SPI, it may be noted, uses July 2001 as the benchmark and now extends to 17 cities/towns.

Interestingly, the week under review saw the highest increase in SPI for the highest income strata (above Rs12,000 per month) — 0.33 per cent.

In a shift from the trend of several preceding weeks, the SPI moved up by only 0.11 per cent for the lowest income strata with monthly incomes of up to Rs3,000. For the middle order households, it surged by 0.17 per cent (monthly incomes of Rs3001 to Rs5,000) and by 0.28 per cent (monthly incomes of Rs5,001 to Rs12,000) as compared to preceding week.

The FBS further reported increase in prices of 15 essential items during the week under review over the preceding week. The tinned vegetable ghee and cooking oil led all the items in the price surge as their average prices went up by 4.58% and 4.15%, respectively because of the increase in regulatory duty and sales tax on inputs. The raise in prices of other items was as follows:

Onions (2.09%), eggs (1.86%), rice basmati (broken) (1.17%), coarse latha (0.88%), mutton (0.61%), garlic (0.54%), beef (0.51%), cigarettes (K-2) (0.50%), chicken farm (0.47%), voile and washing soap (0.41% each), rice irri-6 (0.25%) and lawn (0.17%).

A slight reduction in average prices of 11 items is also recorded in the FBS data. These included:

Potatoes (-1.01%), mustard oil (-0.98%), bananas (-0.69%), vegetable ghee (loose) (-0.52%), red chilies powdered (-0.44%), mash pulse (-0.33%), sugar (-0.31%), moong pulse (-0.28%), wheat flour (-0.21%), tomatoes (-0.07%) and petrol (-0.03%).

Cement prices during the week under review also underwent a drop of 1.40% from the preceding week. But the chemical fertilizers present a mixed picture.