The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation decreased for the second straight week by 0.06 percent while it went 19.36 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, the SPI-based weekly inflation decreased slightly for the week ended on January 20, 2022, after registering a decline of 0.43 percent in the preceding week.
The weekly inflation for the lowest income group witnessed an increase of 0.02 percent, while it went 20.85 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same income group. However, for other income groups (Q2-Q5), it went down from 0.01 percent to 0.13 percent for the week ended on January 20, 2022, and increased from 17.37 percent to 19.61 on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same groups. According to the PBS, the combined index was at 167.29 on January 20, 2022 as compared to 167.39 on January 13, 2021 while the index was recorded at 140.15 a year ago on January 21, 2021. The SPI is computed on a weekly basis to assess the price movements of essential commodities at a shorter interval of time so as to review the price situation in the country. The SPI comprises 51 essential items and the prices are being collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.
During the week under review, out of 51 items, prices of 24 (47.06%) items increased, prices of 07 (13.72%) items decreased, and prices of 20 (39.22%) items remained stable.
The SPI for the current week recorded a decrease in the prices of food items including chicken (7.74%), onions (4.47%), potatoes (1.89%), eggs (1.67%), pulse Moong (0.89%), and sugar (0.39%); and non-food item electricity for Q1 (1.88%), with joint impact of (-0.59%) into the overall SPI for combined group of (-0.06%).
On the other hand, an increase was observed in the prices of tomatoes (35.27%), garlic (3.79%), match box (3.10%), diesel (2.09%), petrol (2.07%), firewood (2.01%), beef (1.60%), pulse gram (1.52%), mutton (1.45%) and bananas (1.03%). According to the PBS data, the year on year trend depicts an overall increase of 19.36%, including electricity for Q1 (81.39%), LPG (52.39%), gents sponge chappal (50.25%), cooking oil 5-litre (49.83%), mustard oil (46.28%), vegetable ghee 1-kg (45.88%), vegetable ghee 2.5-kg (45.40%), washing soap (44.79%), gents sandal (44.49%), pulse Masoor (38.55%), petrol (34.87%) and diesel (27.35%), while a major decrease was observed in the prices of pulse Moong (27.20%), chillies powdered (6.71%), tomatoes (6.04%) and onions (1.47%).
