ISLAMABAD, Feb 1: Sensitive Price Indicator showed 0.13 per cent decline during the week ending Jan 30, 2003, compared to preceding week, thanks to some let-up in market prices of a few foodstuffs.

According to the weekly price data released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics here on Saturday, the drop in SPI was the steepest for the households in the highest income bracket, that is, above Rs 12,000 per month. This means that only those items prices fell, which were normally consumed by these households.

The second highest beneficiary of the price trend during the period under review was the class of households earning monthly incomes ranging from Rs5001 to Rs12,000. The prices cascaded down to 0.5pc for households in the income bracket Rs3001-5000 and to 0.1pc for those at the bottom - incomes up to Rs3000.

As compared to corresponding period of previous year, the SPI registered an increase of 4.41pc. At the end of the week under review, the aggregate SPI index for all the income brackets stood at 107.40. Close behind it was the SPI index for lowest income group - 106.96.

Major contributors to the slide in SPI were tomatoes, chicken farm and all the four pulses whose prices fell during the period under review.

FBS, basing its calculations on prices of 51 essential items forming the SPI basket collected in 17 towns, reported reduction in prices of 11 items as follows:

Tomatoes (-12.91pc), chicken farm (-4.30pc), gram pulse washed (-1.37pc), masoor pulse washed (-0.82pc), mash pulse washed (- 0.68pc), onions (-0.67pc), rice basmati broken (-0.33pc), red chilies (-0.24pc), moong pulse washed (-0.17pc), gur (-0.15pc) and vegetable ghee (-0.11pc).

A significant development of the week was the increase in price of potato, which had witnessed a sharp slump and consequent sharp drop in price. The week saw a slight upward movement in the price of potato from Rs7.04 per kg of preceding week to Rs7.11 per kg - a drop of 0.99%.

Besides, prices of 11 other essential items shot up during the period under review as compared to previous week. These were:

Sugar (1.06pc), electric bulb (60 watts) (0.95pc), bananas (0.87pc), egg (farm) (0.61pc), firewood (0.55pc), beef (0.47pc), cooked dal (plate) (0.46pc), wheat (0.44pc), wheat flour