ISLAMABAD, Nov 22: Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) recorded the highest increase of 1.64 per cent during the week ending Nov 20, 2003, over the previous week.

This increase, according to the weekly price review by the Federal Bureau of Statistics released here on Saturday, is linked with another record established during the period under review: Prices of 21 essential items, constituting nearly 40pc of the 53 essential items comprising the SPI basket, spiralled.

The groups of items that contributed to the dramatic rise in SPI were foodstuffs and petroleum fuels. These went up by 2.25pc and 0.98pc, respectively.

At the end of the period under review, the index stood at 115.19, as compared to 113.33 during the period week. The FBS figures also showed an increase of 7.45pc in SPI over the corresponding period of previous year, more than the official rate of inflation.

In terms of income groups, the SPI rose by 1.47pc for the households earning up to Rs3,000 per month. The middle level households in the income bracket Rs3001-5000 and those with incomes ranging between Rs5001 and Rs12000 incurred increases of 1.57pc and 1.64pc, respectively.

The increase in SPI for households with incomes above Rs12,000 was of 1.55pc.

Tomatoes and onions topped the list of items that became dearer during the period under review. The average rate of tomato, based on the price data collected in 17 towns of Pakistan, shot up by 57.32pc from Rs31.02 to Rs48.80 per kg, while the average price of onion spiralled by 13.48pc to Rs14.06 per kg.

The remaining 19 items registered increase in prices went up as follows, as compared to previous week:

Egg (farm) (6.56pc), chicken (farm) (3.60pc) coarse latha (1.60pc), potatoes (1.53pc), bananas (1.36pc), mutton (1.27pc), wheat flour average quality (1.22pc), LPG (11 kg cylinder) (1.18pc), diesel (1.04pc), wheat (0.99pc), petrol (0.98pc), garlic (0.89pc), beef (0.81pc), bread plain medium size (0.52pc), kerosene (0.45pc), shirting (0.41pc), firewood (0.26pc), curd (0.13pc) and vegetable ghee (loose) (0.05pc).

The prices of following 11 items decreased from previous week:

Voile printed (-1.73pc), lawn (-0.85pc), gram pulse washed (-0.68pc), gur (-0.58pc), red chilies (powdered) (-0.38pc), mustard oil (-0.28pc), mustard oil (-0.26pc), sugar (-0.26pc), masoor pulse washed (-0.12pc), rice basmati broken (-0.10pc), mash pulse washed (-0.08pc) and moong pulse washed (-0.04pc).

FERTILIZERS: A major development of the period under review was the sharp spurt in prices of chemical fertilizers. Included among these were UreaSona and Urea Kisan, in which Pakistan is self- sufficient. Their prices increased by 0.10 and 0.11pc, to Rs419.67 and Rs408 per 50 kg bag, respectively.