ISLAMABAD, June 1: Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) inflation spiralled by a further 0.42 per cent during the week ending May 30 as compared to preceding week, according to the Federal Bureau of Statistics data released here on Saturday.

The increase is the highest over the previous eight weeks. This may be due to the frequent resort to raise in prices of petroleum products, gas and electricity. During the preceding week ending May 23, SPI had gone up by 0.27 per cent.

Using 2000-01 as the base year, the new SPI is based on prices of 51 essential items collected from 17 cities.

At the end of the week under report, the SPI stood at 104.50, denoting an increase of 4.50 per cent during the current financial year.

The price spiral for the lowest income group with incomes up to Rs3,000 is reported by FBS as 0.39 per cent, compared to 0.42 per cent for the income strata between Rs3,001 and Rs5,000, 0.43 per cent for those with incomes between Rs5,001 and Rs12,000 and 0.40 per cent for those with incomes above Rs12,000.

During the week under report, the prices of 16 essential items soared. Highest increase was recorded in the prices of farm eggs (12.60 per cent) and tomatoes (7.81 per cent). The other items which became dearer, as compared to previous week, were:

Wheat (0.13 per cent), wheat flour average quality (0.75 per cent), rice basmati (broken) (0.06 per cent), gur (0.73 per cent), milk fresh (0.33 per cent), vegetable ghee loose (1.73 per cent), cooking oil (Habib) (0.10 per cent), potatoes (1.88 per cent), bananas (2.41 per cent), red chilies powdered (0.30 per cent), garlic (2.59 per cent), lawn (0.21 per cent), kerosene (0.41 per cent), farm chicken (2.84 per cent).

The number of essential items the prices of which registered some decline were:

Rice irri-6 (-0.25 per cent), masoor pulse washed (-0.86 per cent), mash pulse washed (-0.46 per cent), gram pulse washed (-0.0.03 per cent), sugar (-0.42 per cent) and onions (-3.03 per cent).