ISLAMABAD: Weekly inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Index (SPI), posted an increase of 31.83 per cent for the combined income group on a year-on-year basis ending Jan 19 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, no change was reported in the SPI on a week-on-week basis. This was mainly because of an increase in food items, especially vegetables like onions, over the past few weeks.

The SPI monitors the prices of 51 essential items based on a survey of 50 markets in 17 cities across the country. During the week under review, the prices of 23 out of 51 items increased, 11 decreased, and 17 remained stable.

On a year-on-year basis, the items whose prices jumped included onions (482.07pc), chicken (101.93pc), tea Lipton (65.41pc), eggs (64.23pc), diesel (57.34pc), rice basmati broken (56.09pc), pulse moong (55.63pc), rice Irri-6/9 (50.28pc), salt powdered (49.50pc), bananas (47.73pc) and wheat flour (46.38pc).

A major increase on a week-on-week increase was observed in the prices of rice basmati broken (3.54pc), onions (3.50pc), chicken (3.21pc), bananas (3.04pc), rice Irri-6/9 (2.43pc), garlic (2.16pc), bread (1.45pc), cooked beef (1.26pc), tea prepared (1.22pc), cooked daal (1.12pc), LPG (2.34pc) and washing soap (1.54pc).

A decrease was observed in the prices of wheat flour (5.98pc), tomatoes (2.87pc), potatoes (2.73pc), sugar (0.94pc), vegetable ghee 1kg (0.50pc), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (0.41pc), pulse masoor (0.38pc), eggs (0.09pc), cooking oil 5-litre (0.07pc), pulse gram (0.05pc) and mustard oil (0.01pc).

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2023