Higher food prices contribute to weekly inflation of 29%

ISLAMABAD: According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the inflation measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) increased by 0.33 percent for the week ending on July 13, 2023. 

This rise was primarily driven by higher prices of food items, including sugar (5.22 percent), wheat flour (4.23 percent), gur (3.68 percent), salt powdered (2.17 percent), and eggs (1.34 percent).

On a year-on-year basis, there has been a significant increase of 28.96 percent in overall inflation. This upward trend is mainly attributed to substantial price hikes in wheat flour (129.84 percent), cigarettes (111.74 percent), gas charges for q1 (108.38 percent), tea lipton (101.56 percent), rice basmati broken (76.74 percent), rice irri-6/9 (73.88 percent), potatoes (61.67 percent), gents sponge chappal (58.05 percent), sugar (57.91 percent), chicken (56.06 percent), salt powdered (53.49 percent), gur (48.30 percent), and bread (46.86 percent). However, certain items have experienced a decrease in prices, including onions (28.17 percent), electricity for q1 (14.58 percent), pulse masoor (7.54 percent), diesel (5.82 percent), LPG (1.23 percent), and vegetable ghee 1 kg (1.16 percent).

Out of the 51 items considered, during the week, the prices of 21 items increased (41.17 percent), 11 items decreased (21.58 percent), and 19 items remained stable (37.25 percent).

Some of the notable items that saw an increase in their average prices during the week compared to the previous week were sugar (5.22 percent), wheat flour bag 20 kg (4.23 percent), gur (3.68 percent), salt powdered (2.17 percent), eggs (1.34 percent), energy saver philips (0.81 percent), toilet soap (0.80 percent), rice basmati broken (0.77 percent), rice irri-6/9 (0.75 percent), milk fresh (0.47 percent), matchbox (0.36 percent), tea prepared ordinary (0.33 percent), garlic (0.33 percent), sufi washing soap (0.29 percent), pulse mash (0.27 percent), potatoes (0.14 percent), curd (0.14 percent), beef with bone (0.12 percent), cooked beef (0.08 percent), powdered milk nido (0.06 percent), and mustard oil (0.04 percent).

On the other hand, the average prices of some items decreased during the week compared to the previous week, including bananas (12.18 percent), tomatoes (6.35 percent), onions (5.32 percent), LPG (2.17 percent), vegetable ghee dalda/habib 2.5 kg tin each (0.85 percent), pulse moong (0.70 percent), cooking oil dalda or other similar brand (sn), 5-litre tin each (0.51 percent), pulse gram (0.46 percent), vegetable ghee dalda/habib or other superior quality 1 kg pouch each (0.36 percent), pulse masoor (0.18 percent), and chicken (0.13 percent).