ISLAMABAD: Weekly inflation for the combined group in the period ended on April 8 slightly increased by 0.60 per cent on the back of an uptick in prices of essential food items, showed data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday.

The week-on-week increase in inflation was noticed after a drop in the past week. Since January, an upward movement in the prices of essential kitchen items was noted despite the government’s claims that rates of consumer items were declining.

The PBS calculates the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) based on the prices of 51 essential items from 50 markets across 17 cities of the country.

For the lowest income group earning below Rs17,732 per month, the SPI increased by 0.51pc and for the group earning above Rs44,175, it recorded an uptick of 0.62pc.

This was mainly due to an increase in prices of food items including chicken 11.21pc, potatoes 9.98pc, tomatoes 7.51pc and bananas 4.99pc.

The items whose prices decreased during the week included sugar 3.07pc, garlic 2.27pc, eggs 1.41pc, wheat flour bag 0.69pc, pulse maash 0.46pc, pulse gram 0.33pc, onions 0.18pc, pulse masoor 0.13pc and rice broken 0.11pc.

Among non-food items, the price of LPG declined 2.28 and firewood 1.32pc.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2021