January 28, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 24, 1423

ISLAMABAD, Jan 27: Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) went up by 0.13 per cent during the week ending January 23, 2003, over the preceding week, according to the weekly price data released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS).

As a result, the SPI index stood at 107.54 at the end of the week, compared to previous week’s 107.40. This denotes an increase of 4.66 per cent over the corresponding period of previous year.

The SPI increased by 0.13 per cent for the households with monthly incomes up to Rs3,000 and Rs3,001-5,000. The rise in SPI for households in income bracket Rs5,001-12,000 and those above Rs12,000 was 0.14 and 0.15 per cent, respectively.

According to FBS data, the prices of 16 essential items increased and those of 11 items decreased, while the prices of 26 remaining items of SPI basket remained unchanged during the week under review.

The rising trend of prices affected the following 16 items, as compared to previous week:

Chicken farm (2.27%), tomatoes (1.66%), rice irri-6 and bananas (1.24%), wheat (1.22%), beef (0.97%), sugar (0.86%), LPG (11-kg cylinder) (0.70%), cooked beef (plate) (0.58%), firewood (0.56%), bread plain medium size (0.54%), wheat flour average quality (0.48%), rice basmati broken (0.33%), egg (farm) (0.31%), mutton (0.24%) and vegetable ghee (loose) (0.11%).

It was mainly the glut of potatoes which blunted somewhat the effect of general price level. Its price moved down from Rs7.55 to Rs7.04 per kg, down 6.75 per cent from previous week. The prices of other 10 items showed decrease as compared to previous week as follows:

Onions (2.94%), garlic (1.50%), red chilies (powdered) (0.79%), masoor pulse washed (0.70%), moong pulse washed (0.67%), mustard oil (0.46%), voile printed (0.45%), mash pulse washed (0.32%), gram pulse washed (29%) and kerosene (0.13%).

According to the FBS release, the downward slide of cement prices was halted during the week. The average price thus was calculated as Rs198.27 per bag as compared to Rs236.25 the previous week.

As regards fertilizers, Urea Sona registered an increase of 0.20 per cent over the previous week. The price trends for four other fertilisers were negative, as follows:

Urea kisan (0.12%), dia ammonium phosphate (0.45%), S.S.P Phosphate (PD) (0.60%) and C. Ammonium Nitrate (1.25%).

CPI: The FBS has also released data about Consumer Price Indices (CPI) for the first half of 2002-03 relating to different income groups, as compared to corresponding period of previous year. It shows that the CPI was the lowest for the affluent households with incomes above Rs12,000 per month.

The hardest hit was the middle income group with incomes ranging from Rs3,001 to Rs5,000 with a hike of 3.84 per cent during the 6-month period under review.

The CPI rose for the lowest income households (up to Rs3,000) by 3.55 per cent and for households in income bracket Rs5,001-12,000 by 3.68 per cent. These figures were averaged down to 3.55 per cent for all the classes combined.

Based on these percentage increases, the CPI indices by income groups are reported by FBS as follows:

Incomes up to Rs3,000: 106.02; Rs3,001-5,000: 106.67; Rs5,001-12,000: 106.50; and above Rs12,000: 106.35.

The aggregate CPI for all income groups stood at 106.46, according to FBS.

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