ISLAMABAD: Prices rose at the fastest pace in the outgoing week in more than four months, mainly led by increases in food and fuel rates, official data showed on Friday.

As a result, short-term inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), was recorded at 34.5 per cent on a year-on-year basis for the week ended on Feb 2, rising from 32.6pc in the previous week, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said.

The week-on-week inflation figure also jumped to 2.8pc from 0.45pc a week ago. Of the 51 items tracked, prices of 32 items increased, one item decreased, whereas those of 18 items remained unchanged.

The 34.5pc jump in prices is the highest annual rise since the week ending Sept 15, 2022, when the SPI inflation was 40.6pc.

The items whose prices increased the most compared to the previous year were onions (up 556.36pc), chicken (90.9pc), eggs (81.7pc), diesel (81.4pc), petrol (68.8pc), tea (63.9pc), broken basmati rice (63.4pc), rice Irri-6/9 (62.4pc), pulse moong (61.1pc), bananas (57.4pc), gram pulse (53.2pc), bread (48.8pc), wheat flour (48.4pc), powdered salt (48.1pc), maash pulse (46.2pc), LPG (43.8pc), mustard oil (42.1pc), and washing soap (42pc).

On the other hand, prices of tomatoes (62pc), powdered chillies (15.3pc), electricity (12.3pc) and gur (0.27pc) dropped.

On a week-on-week basis, the highest change was noted in the prices of garlic (17.1pc), gram pulse (7.1pc), bananas (4.8pc), chicken (4.4pc), mash pulse (3.9pc), masoor pulse (3.9pc), mustard oil (3.5pc), eggs (3.4pc), moong pulse (2.3pc), sugar (2.3pc), vegetable ghee (2.13pc), and broken basmati rice (2.12pc), LPG (17.6pc), petrol (16.2pc), and diesel (15.3pc).

The SPI increased by 1.71pc for the lowest-income group (i.e. people earning below Rs17,732 per month) and by 3.3pc for the group with a monthly income of more than Rs44,175, according to the PBS.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2023