ISLAMABAD: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation increased by 8.21pc in February 2019 as compared to the same month of last year.
On a month-on-month basis, the CPI increased by 0.64pc in February 2019 as compared to January, a press statement issued by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) revealed on Friday.
In February, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) increased by 0.90pc, and Sensitive Price Index (SPI) increased by 2.21pc respectively.
The average inflation rate during the period July-February also rose by 6.46pc as compared to the same period of last year.
PBS collects the retail prices and computes the CPI for a basket of 487 items collected from 40 cities and 76 markets. For each item, four quotations are collected from each market on a monthly basis. WPI, on a monthly basis, is compiled from 21 markets and 21 cities for a basket of 463 items. SPI is compiled on a weekly basis for 53 items from 53 markets of 17 cities.
The top few commodities which witnessed an increase in their prices during February 2019 as compared to the same month last year included tomatoes (179.40pc), ginger (16.21pc), beef (14.42pc), sugar (13.86pc), tea lipton (13.70pc), mutton (12.79pc), gur (10.82pc), ghee (8.30pc), fish (7.90pc), pulse moong (7.89pc), eggs (7.21pc), cooking oil (7.17pc), rice (7.16pc), pulse gram (6.92pc), gram whole black (4.85pc), milk fresh (4.04pc) and wheat (3.21pc).
Similarly, the commodities that witnessed a decrease in prices included onion (32.76pc), potatoes (18.71pc), gram whole yellow (14.21pc), LPG (13.46pc), chicken (11.00pc), banana (6.10pc), garlic (5.71pc), bricks (3.52pc), CNG (1.76pc), iron bar (1.31pc), petrol (0.65pc), kerosene oil (0.54pc) pulse mash (0.46pc), and cement (0.22pc)
