ISLAMABAD: Short-term inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), increased 4.57 per cent year-on-year in the week ending Oct 16, owing to an increase in the retail price of food products in the domestic market.

The SPI-based inflation recorded an upward trend for the past 11 consecutive weeks. The increase is mainly driven by a surge in prices of perishable products, including tomatoes, onions, potatoes and wheat flour.

It, however, increased by 0.49pc from the previous week, official data showed on Friday.

The prices of tomatoes, onions and potatoes saw an increase owing to a disruption in supply due to floods. The extraordinary spike in the retail prices of sugar and meat also contributed to reversing the trend during the past weeks under review.

Surge in tomato, onion and wheat flour prices fuels 11th straight weekly rise

The retail price of sugar in the market reached from Rs180 to Rs200 per kg.

The overall short-term inflation has also slowed due to the higher base of last year. Moreover, the prices remained stable for most of the products, excluding wheat flour and a few perishable products. The price of meat has been steadily on the rise in the past few weeks.

The weekly inflation hit a record 48.35pc year-on-year in early May 2023, but then decelerated as low as 24.4pc in late August 2023 before surging past 40pc during the week ending Nov 16, 2023.

The items whose prices increased the most over the previous week included tomatoes (33.20pc), onions (8.70pc), eggs (2.18pc), wheat flour (1.42pc), garlic (0.85pc), potatoes (0.71pc), vegetable ghee 2.5Kg (0.63pc), vegetable ghee 1Kg (0.56pc), firewood (0.40pc), LPG (0.18pc), washing soap (0.08pc) and shirting (0.07pc).

The items whose prices saw a decline week-on-week included chicken (6.38pc), bananas (4.70pc), pulse gram (2.20pc), petrol (2.09pc), diesel (0.55pc), rice basmati broken (0.51pc), pulse moong (0.49pc) and rice IRRI-6/9 (0.03pc).

However, on an annual basis, the items whose prices increased the most included tomatoes (121.38pc), ladies sandal (55.62pc), sugar (36.94pc), gas charges for Q1 (29.85pc), wheat flour (16.92pc), gur (15.90pc), beef (12.95pc), vegetable ghee 1 Kg (12.39pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (12.10pc), firewood (11.71pc), diesel (9.75pc) and eggs (9.02pc).

In contrast, the prices of onions dropped 33.55pc, followed by chicken (29.81pc), pulse gram (28.86pc), garlic (28.48pc), electricity charges for Q1 (26.26pc), tea Lipton (17.93pc), pulse mash (17.55pc), potatoes (16.97pc), pulse masoor (4.11pc) and LPG (3.44pc).

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2025