ISLAMABAD, Sept 14: Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the poor households with income of up to Rs3,000 per month soared by 0.74 per cent during the week ending September 12 over the previous week.

Thus the past fortnight proved to be only a brief interregnums during which the SPI either increased marginally or even declined.

The combined SPI encompassing all the four income strata spurted by 0.56pc raising the index to 108.59. For the two middle income groups with monthly incomes ranging between Rs3,001 and Rs 5,000 and between Rs5,001 and Rs12,000, the index was even higher: 108.77 and 109.21. When compared to corresponding week of previous year, the SPI went up by 5.38 per cent.

The price trend impacted all the households in varying degrees indicating the effect on various income groups in obverse proportion to the rise in SPI.

Thus the households with incomes above Rs12,000 had their SPI increased by 0.42pc. As regards those in the middle-income slabs, the SPI went up by 0.63pc and by 0.71pc.

The main contributors to the price spiral, according to weekly release of the Federal Bureau of Statistics here on Saturday, were wheat flour, edible oil, onions, tomatoes, etc. It appears that the hoarders have started taking undue advantage of the reports about export of wheat. Hence the upward trend of prices of wheat and wheat flour witnessed in recent weeks!

During the week under review, the prices of 16 items in all surged as compared to previous week, as follows:

Onions (23.24pc), tomatoes (6.31pc), wheat flour average quality (1.30pc), wheat (1.0pc%), gram pulse washed (0.86pc), gur (0.85pc), bananas and washing soap (nylon) (0.54pc), mutton (0.50pc), mustard oil (0.33pc), potatoes (0.24pc), vegetable ghee (tin) and cooking oil (tin) (0.15pc each), firewood (0.14pc), garlic (0.13pc) and rice basmati broken (0.11pc).

The prices of the following 11 items declined: chicken farm (2.31pc), egg farm (1.98pc), red chilies powdered (1.39pc), moong pulse (0.51pc), lawn (0.32pc), voile printed (0.23pc), mash pulse washed (0.18pc), vegetable ghee (loose) (0.16pc), sugar and kerosene (0.09pc) and masoor pulse washed (0.08pc).

On the energy front, FBS data shows an increase of 0.30pc and 0.05pc in the prices of LPG and diesel.