Weekly inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), jumped more than 30% year over year for the week ended Jan. 6, amid a continuous increase in the prices of foods and a few of fuel items.
“The year-on-year (YoY) trend depicts an increase of 30.60%,” the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said in its weekly report issued on Jan. 6, on the price movement of 51 essential items, based on a survey of 50 markets in 17 major cities across the country.
What is SPI?
The SPI is designed to assess the weekly price movement of essential consumer items so as to take corrective measures. The bureau said it had been recording a double-digit jump in the SPI since Feb 2021, with slight variations throughout the fiscal year 2021-22 and fiscal year 2022-23.
On a YOY basis, onion prices surged the most with an over 501% increase, followed by chicken at 82.5%.
Highest YoY rise
- Onions: 501.23%
- Chicken: 82.5%
- Lipton tea: 65.41%
- Diesel: 60.63%
- Eggs: 50.51%
Highest YoY fall
- Chili Powder: 22.98%
- Gur: 1.11%
Week-over-week increase in inflation
On a week-on-week basis, inflation rose 1.09%, after slightly declining by 0.09% in the previous week, according to the data shared by PBS on Friday. A major increase was noticed in the prices of food items led by chicken with 16.09%.
Highest WoW rise
- Chicken: 16.09%
- Basmati rice: 5.16%
- Flour: 4.87%
- Bananas: 2.97%
- Onions: 2.65%
Highest WoW fall
- Potatoes: 4.61%
- Eggs: 1.31%
- Tomatoes: 1.17%
- Vegetable ghee 2.5kg: 0.71%
- Cooking oil 5 liters: 0.32%
Inflation hitting Pakistan hard
Pakistan has been in the grips of high inflation throughout the past year, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) hitting a decades-high level of 27.2% in August. Even though inflation slowed gradually in the following months, it jumped again to 24.5% in December.
Prices estimated to hike further
The prices of essential food items are estimated to further increase in the coming week after the government recently announced to increase the prices of wheat flour, sugar and ghee by 25% to 62% for sale through the Utility Stores Corporation (USC), to shrink the size of untargeted food subsidies.