ISLAMABAD: Weekly inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Index (SPI), posted an increase of 31.75 per cent for the combined income group on a year-on-year basis ending Jan 12 due to a massive surge in prices of both food and non-food items, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday.

However, the SPI on a week-on-week basis was slightly up by 0.44pc. This was mainly because of an increase in food items, especially wheat flour, as well as vegetables like onions, over the past few weeks.

A 20kg wheat flour bag in Karachi touched the highest rate of Rs2,900, followed by Rs2,760 in Quetta, Rs2,900 in Peshawar and Rs1,295 in Lahore. The flour prices in Punjab are lower than those in other provinces, except Islamabad where it’s sold for around Rs1,295 per 20kg.

Onion prices in Islamabad stood at Rs280 per kg, followed by Rs240 in Peshawar, Rs240 in Lahore, Rs240 in Quetta and Rs240 in Karachi.

The prices of tomatoes and potatoes slightly declined over the past couple of weeks owing to arrival of new crops.

On a year-on-year basis, the items whose prices jumped included onions (437.21pc), chicken (80.51pc), tea Lipton (65.41pc), eggs (61.63pc), diesel (60.63pc), wheat flour (56.11pc), pulse moong (52.97pc), rice basmati broken (51.05pc), salt powdered (49.50pc), petrol (48.21pc), rice Irri-6/9 (46.78pc) and pulse gram (45.80pc).

On the other hand, a major week-on-week increase was observed in the prices of wheat flour (6.75pc), bread (4.85pc), garlic (4.51pc), eggs (4.17pc), pulse moong (4.11pc), rice basmati broken (3.33pc), rice Irri-6/9 (2.63pc), onions (2.44pc), pulse gram (2.39pc), pulse mash (1.69pc), pulse masoor (1.65pc), mustard oil (1.56pc), LPG (5.24pc) and washing soap (1.89pc).

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2023