Weekly inflation remained near the all-time high recorded last week and stood at 45.36 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the week ended on March 30, 2023, showed data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PSB) on Friday.
The year-on-year trend depicts an increase mainly due to an increase in the prices of cigarettes (165.88 percent), onions (127.07 percent), wheat flour (123.22 percent), gas charges for Q1 (108.38 percent), diesel (102.84 percent), tea lipton (98.08 percent), eggs (96.67 percent), bananas (94.89 percent), rice basmati broken (83.65 percent), petrol (81.17 percent), rice irri-6/9 (79.17 percent), pulse moong (67.85 percent) and potatoes (56.44 percent), while decrease was observed in the prices of tomatoes (10.88 percent) and chillies powdered (9.56 percent).
Week-on-week increase
The SPI for the week under review recorded decrease of 0.36 percent over the previous week. A major decrease during the week was observed in the prices of onions (15.10 percent), chicken (11.96 percent), tomatoes (10.26 percent), cooking oil 5 litre (1.24 percent), vegetable ghee 1 kg (1.07 percent), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.77 percent), pulse gram (0.42 percent), pulse moong (0.22 percent) and mustard oil (0.17 percent), LPG (1.35 percent) and firewood (0.35 percent).
On the other hand, an increase was observed in the prices of in the prices of bananas (7.54 percent), eggs (7.22 percent), mutton (2.39 percent), sugar (2.12 percent), wheat flour (1.91 percent), tea lipton (1.79 percent), georgette & shirting (1.32 percent) each, milk fresh (1.12 percent) and beef (1.02 percent).
The SPI is computed on weekly basis to assess the price movement of essential commodities at shorter intervals of time so as to review the price situation in the country. SPI comprises 51 essential items collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.
During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 23 (45.10 percent) items increased, 11 (21.57 percent) items decreased and 17 (33.33 percent) items remained stable.
