September 3, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Saani24,1423

ISLAMABAD, Sept 2: Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) during the week ending August 29 fell by 0.16 per cent as compared to previous week mainly due to decline in prices of chicken from their summer peak of over Rs55 per kg, according to weekly release of the Federal Bureau of Statistics on Monday.

It, therefore, makes sense that the drop in SPI was the highest - 0.20 per cent - for the affluent households with monthly incomes exceeding Rs12,000. It is these households that are the main consumers of chicken meat.

The households with lower incomes benefited from the let-up in prices of chicken by much lower margins (by only 0.02% for households with incomes up to Rs3,000, by 0.06% for those with incomes between Rs3,001 and Rs5,000 and by 0.13% those with incomes between Rs5,001 and Rs12,000) in proportion to the part of their budget expenditure reserved for consumption of chicken meat.

The decline is also understandable in view of steep combined increase of 1.42 per cent in SPI during the preceding three weeks. The decrease in SPI during the week under review denotes a slight correction after it had reached the peak too fast during the preceding weeks.

The SPI for all the four classes included in it moved from 108.11 down to 107.94 in one week.

According to FBS, prices of nine items declined during the week under review as compared to previous week. These were:

Chicken farm (-7.16%), onions (-1.81%), bananas (-1.73%), tomatoes (-0.99%), garlic (-0.96%), lawn (-0.42%), mash pulse (-0.38%), voile printed (-0.14%) and gram pulse (-0.12%).

The number of items which underwent price hike too was quite high: 16, given the fact that the SPI basket includes 51 items. The prices of following items increased as compared to previous week:

Mustard oil (0.99%), potatoes (0.80%), cooked beef (plate) (65%), rice basmati broken (0.51%), rice irri-6 and red chilies powdered (0.49% each), coarse latha (0.26%), beef (0.25%), mutton (0.17%), masoor pulse and vegetable ghee loose (0.17% each), moong pulse (0.16%), egg farm (0.13%), wheat (0.0.12%), wheat flour average quality (0.10%) and gur (0.05%).