Weekly SPI inflation posts 0.20% rise

ISLAMABAD: The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI)-based inflation for the week ended October 14, 2021 witnessed an increase of 0.20 per cent, compared with the previous week, the latest data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) showed.

The weekly SPI with base year 2015/16=100 is covering 17 urban centres and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups.

During the week, of the 51 items, prices of 22 items increased, 10 decreased and the prices of 19 items remained unchanged.

The items that witnessed increase in their prices on a week-on-week basis included tomatoes (19.21 per cent), mustard oil (3.12 per cent), tea prepared (2.12 per cent), LPG (2.07 per cent), washing soap (1.98 per cent), cooked daal (lentils) (1.55 per cent), tea Lipton (1.48 per cent) and cooked beef (1.32 per cent).

On a year-on-year basis, the commodities that witnessed increase in their prices included LPG (64.60 per cent), electricity for the first quarter (61.11 per cent), mustard oil (43.82 per cent), vegetable ghee 1kg (41.55 per cent), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (39.94 per cent), cooking oil 5 litres (38.70 per cent), chilies powdered (33.43 per cent), gents sandal (33.37 per cent), chicken (30.08 per cent), washing soap (26.61 per cent), garlic (22.78 per cent), petrol (22.22 per cent) and diesel (17.13 per cent).

According to the data, the food commodities that witnessed decrease in the prices on a week-on-week basis included sugar (6.28 per cent), eggs (3.80 per cent), pulse moong (3.03 per cent), onions (1.61 per cent), chicken (1.47 per cent), pulse gram (0.94 per cent), bananas (0.93 per cent), wheat flour bag (0.91 per cent), pulse masoor (0.58 per cent) and pulse mash (0.56 per cent).

On a year-on-year basis, the commodities that witnessed decrease in prices during the week included tomatoes (50.11 per cent), pulse moong (32.01 per cent), onions (31.17 per cent), potatoes (22.30 per cent) and pulse mash (1.73 per cent).