Weekly inflation drops by 0.28% 

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) recorded a slight decline of 0.28% in the inflation rate for the week ending on February 01, 2024. 

The SPI, which measures the weekly changes in the prices of 51 essential items across 17 cities, increased by 39.45% year-on-year compared to the same period last year. 

According to the latest data released by the Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the major contributors to the SPI decrease were tomatoes, eggs, onions, LPG, tea lipton, potatoes, pulse masoor, cooking oil and mustard oil, which saw their prices fall by 18.28%, 7.77%, 6.99%, 1.53%, 1.29%, 1.25%, 0.80%, 0.36% and 0.28% respectively.

However, not all items witnessed a downward trend, as some commodities registered an increase in their prices. 

The most notable ones were petrol, chicken, diesel, energy saver, bananas, salt powdered, pulse moong, mutton, gur, beef, tea prepared and georgette, which experienced a price hike of 5.20%, 1.88%, 0.95%, 0.70%, 0.68%, 0.55%, 0.34%, 0.33%, 0.21%, 0.15%, 0.14% and 0.10% respectively.

Out of the 51 items in the SPI basket, 12 (23.53%) showed an increase, 17 (33.33%) showed a decrease and 22 (43.14%) remained unchanged in their prices during the week.

The year-on-year comparison of the SPI revealed a sharp increase of 39.45%, mainly driven by the soaring prices of gas charges for Q1, cigarettes, tomatoes, chilies powder, wheat flour, gents sponge chappal, sugar, gents sandal, gur, salt powdered, rice IRRI-6/9 and pulse mash, which rose by 1108.59%, 92.30%, 90.40%, 81.74%, 61.97%, 58.05%, 54.79%, 53.37%, 51.67%, 40.97%, 38.79% and 37.38% respectively. 

On the other hand, some items recorded a decrease in their prices on a yearly basis, such as onions, mustard oil, bananas, vegetable ghee 1 KG, LPG and vegetable ghee 2.5 KG, which fell by 15.10%, 10.86%, 10.15%, 3.58%, 1.63% and 0.80% respectively.