ISLAMABAD, Dec 24: The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) rose by 0.11 per cent during the week ending December 23 2005, as compared to the previous week, according to the weekly price data released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) on Saturday.
The data revealed that over all, the SPI recorded an increase during the week under review for all income groups due to the raise in prices of tomatoes, chicken, garlic, LPG cylinder, sugar, gur and onion.
The group-wise analysis of the behaviour of prices of the essential items prevailing in 17 towns of Pakistan shows that the SPI witnessed an increase of 0.05 per cent and 0.07 per cent for households in the two lower income brackets (up to Rs3,000 and Rs3,001-Rs5,000).
For the households in income brackets of Rs5,001-Rs12,000, the increase in SPI was in the range of 0.11 per cent. While, for the households in the income group basket of over Rs12,000, the inflation registered a growth 0.17 per cent over the previous week.
Comparing with the corresponding week of last year, the SPI registered an increase of 8.04 per cent during the week under review.
According to the FBS data, prices of 15 items went up during the period under review as compared to the previous week. These items were: Tomatoes (8.63 per cent), chicken, farm (4.77 per cent), garlic (3.06 per cent), LPG cylinder (2.84 per cent), sugar (1.91 per cent), gur (1.81 per cent), bananas (1.66 per cent), onions (1.58 per cent), firewood (1.45 per cent), mutton (0.30 per cent), eggs (0.25 per cent), mash pulse washed (0.17 per cent), beef (0.16 per cent), gram pulse washed (0.14 per cent) and wheat (0.09 per cent).
The week under review also saw a decrease in average prices of six essential items. These include: Potatoes (12.59 per cent), cigarettes (0.84 per cent), red chillies (Powder) (0.43 per cent), Masoor pulse washed (0.10 per cent) and vegetable ghee (open) (0.09 per cent).
