Weekly inflation increases by 31% YoY

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) recorded a slight increase of 0.04% week-on-week (WoW) for the week ending February 22, 2024, while the SPI increased by 30.68% year-on-year (YoY) compared to the corresponding period last year. 

A Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) is computed on a weekly basis to assess the price movement of essential commodities at a shorter interval of time to review the price situation in the country.

According to the latest data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), prices of various items increased with tomatoes (22.71%), bananas (7.40%), diesel (3.02%), chicken (1.22%), petrol (1.00%), sugar (0.87%), mutton (0.86%), beef (0.74%), curd (0.71%), pulse moong (0.54%), firewood (0.20%) and georgette (0.14%).

The SPI data shows a WoW decrease in several commodities. Onion prices decreased by 14.42%, making it the item with the largest drop. Eggs, LPG, cooking oil, wheat flour, mustard oil, potatoes, and vegetable ghee also showed price reductions.

Out of 51 monitored items, the report indicates that prices increased for 23 items, decreased for 8 items, and remained stable for 20 items. 

The year-on-year trend depicts the increase of 30.68%, gas charges for Q1 (480.00%), tomatoes (199.93%), chili powder (81.74%), wheat flour (65.29%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%), gents sandal (53.37%), sugar

(50.84%), gur (48.96%), salt powder (39.97%), garlic (36.31%) and energy saver (34.17%).

A decrease was observed in the prices of bananas (17.73%), vegetable ghee 1 KG (17.26%), mustard oil (15.98%), cooking oil 5 litre (13.66%), vegetable ghee 2.5 KG (12.02%), LPG (9.42%) and eggs (5.33%).