Uzair bin Farid

No change has been observed in the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) of weekly inflation for the week that ended on December 8, 2022, for the combined consumption group. According to the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), SPI remained unchanged for the week ending on December 8 over the previous week. SPI remained constant at 218.51 points for two consecutive weeks, indicating stable prices for items in the combined consumption group.

However, over the same week of last year, SPI showed an increase of 30.665% for the combined consumption group.The weekly SPI currently being used by the PBS relied on the year 2015-16=100 as the base year and it covers 17 major urban centers with 51 essential items for all income groups.The weekly SPI for the lowest income group of up to PKR 17,732 also remained unchanged at 227.45 points.

Meanwhile, the weekly SPI for the income group from PKR 17,732-22,888 declined by 0.02% whereas for income groups from PKR 22,889-29,517; PKR 29,518-44,175 and for income groups above PKR 44,175, it witnessed a nominal increase of 0.01% for each group.During the week ending on December 08, out of 51 items, prices of 24 (47.06%) items increased, 8 (15.69%) items decreased and 19 (37.25%) items remained stable.The items which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week (wow) basis included tomatoes (25.48%), chicken (3.70%), potatoes (3.68%), pulse masoor (0.38%), cooking oil 5-litre (0.32%) vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.32%), pulse gram (0.30%) and vegetable ghee 1-kg (0.28%).

The commodities which recorded an increase in their average prices included onions (8.74%), bananas (2.36%), rice basmati broken (2.22%), eggs (1.98%), salt powdered (1.33%), sugar (1.17%), LPG (2.47%) and matchbox (1.95%). On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the commodities that witnessed a decrease in prices included chillies powdered (40.90%), gur (4.76%) and electricity for Q-1 (2.67%). The commodities that witnessed an increase in prices on YoY basis included onions (422.57%), diesel (64.57%), tea packets (62.61%), salt powdered (57.35%), eggs (55.28%), petrol (53.85%), gents sponge chappal (52.21%), bananas (50.58%), tomatoes (49.04%), pulse gram (48.06%), pulse moong (45.44%), mustard oil (42.96%) and pulse mash (39.98%).

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk