ISLAMABAD, Sept 21: Sensitive Price Indicator during the week ending September 19 dropped by 0.20 per cent as compared to previous week, according to the weekly price data released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics here on Saturday.

Consequently, the price index at the end of the week stood at 108.59. This denotes 8.59 per cent increase since the induction of new SPI in June 2001.

But the fall in SPI for the low-income people with monthly incomes up to Rs3,000 and Rs5,000 was higher - by 0.23 per cent.

This increase in decline for these income strata occurred because the SPI was reduced by even higher margin for households in higher income brackets: by 0.21 per cent for the households in the income range Rs5,001-Rs12,000 and by 0.17 per cent those with incomes above Rs12,000.

Nevertheless, the data showed an increase of 5.12 per cent in SPI during the week under review when compared to corresponding period of previous year.

The week saw a decrease in average prices of 9 out of 51 essential items in the SPI basket. These prices are collected from 17 towns of the Pakistan. Following are the items:

Onions (-9.80%), chicken farm (-2.43%), potatoes (-2.67%), egg (farm) (1.96%), garlic (-1.25%), red chilies (powdered) (-1.08%), bananas (-0.85%), veg. ghee (loose) (-0.33%) and sugar (-0.23%).

But the prices of 14 other essential items flared during the week under review as compared to previous week as follows:

Tomatoes (11.80%), tea (prepared) (0.70%), masoor pulse washed (0.56%), rice basmati broken (0.51%), wheat, gram pulse washed and gur (0.47% each), mash pulse washed (0.43%), moong pulse washed (0.29%), curd (0.27%), rice irri-6 (0.24%), wheat flour average quality (0.10%), beef and milk fresh (0.05% each).

According to FBS data, the cement prices after a flare-up of the previous few weeks, declined by 0.67 per cent. The average prices that ruled during the week under review were Rs227 per bag.

City-wise analysis shows that the cement bag was selling at the rate of Rs236.50 in Peshawar, Rs235 in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Quetta, Rs230 in Lahore, Rs225 in Multan, Rs227.50 in Karachi, and Rs205 in Hyderabad.