ISLAMABAD: Short-term inflation, based on the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), rose to a new high of 48.35 per cent for the week ending May 4, official data showed on Friday.

However, on a week-on-week basis, the reading increased was 1.05pc, with food items getting costlier, particularly chicken, eggs, flour, wheat products, pulses, fruits, potatoes and meat.

The SPI has steadily been on the rise since the start of Ramazan due to continued rupee devaluation, costly petrol prices, increase in sales tax and higher electricity charges.

Of the 51 items in the SPI basket, prices of 30 goods soared, nine dropped and 12 remained unchanged compared to the previous week.

During the week under review, the items whose prices increased the most over the same week a year ago were: wheat flour (177.6pc), potatoes (123­pc), gas charges for Q1 (108.38pc), tea (104.28pc), diesel (99.39pc), eggs (95.45pc), rice basmati broken (89.31pc), bananas (87.86pc), petrol (87.81pc), rice Irri-6/9 (84.43pc), pulse moong (68.44pc), bread (62.83pc) and pulse mash (60.59pc).

On a week-on-week basis, the biggest rise was observed in the prices of chicken (8.91pc), potatoes (3.99pc), powdered milk (3.81pc), pulse gram (1.96pc), pulse masoor (1.83pc), eggs (1.81pc), mutton (1.71pc), and pulse mash (1.58pc).

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2023