According to statistics provided by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, short-term inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), rose to an unprecedented 47.23% year-over-year for the combined income category for the week ending April 19.
Since August of last year, the year-over-year SPI has been gradually increasing and has largely been over 40%. On August 18 of last year, it increased to 42.31 percent, and on September 1 and March 22 of this year, it reached 45.5 percent and 46.65 percent, respectively.
For the time period under examination, weekly inflation was 0.51 percent, with food prices rising in particular for potatoes, tea, bread, chicken, LPG, and gasoline.
Since the beginning of Ramadan, the SPI has primarily grown as a result of record rupee depreciation, expensive gasoline prices, an increase in sales tax, and higher electricity costs. The rising shipping costs are one of the reasons that perishable goods are becoming more expensive.
The government has only been able to control inflation thus far by gradually raising interest rates, which reached a record high of 21 percent in the nation’s history.
While the government’s focus is only on restricting the money supply to the market, which has so far not produced desired outcomes, economists think that the present high prices were caused by a number of reasons, including the supply side’s highest-ever transportation cost.
Wheat flour had a price increase of 143.88 percent during the review week, followed by gas prices for Q1 (108.38 percent), tea Lipton (104.28 percent), diesel (102.84 percent), potatoes (98.74 percent), bananas (98.42 percent), eggs (97.80 percent), petrol (87.81 percent), rice basmati broken (87.30 percent), rice Irri-6/9 (83.52 percent), pulse moong (68.94 percent), bread (59.
Out of the 51 goods in the SPI basket, 29 had huge price increases week over week, 8 saw price decreases, and 14 saw no change in price.
The largest changes in price were seen for potatoes (3.79%), Lipton tea (3.61%), gur (3.40%), bread (2.48%), chicken (2%), bananas (1.68%), basmati broken rice (1.54%), Irri-6/9 rice (1.22%), LPG (4.75%), petrol (3.67%), and matchbox (2.51%).
