ISLAMABAD: The rates for the essential basic items went up as the weekly inflation measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), witnessed an increase of 0.04 percent for the combined consumption groups during the week ended on February 15, reported by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
According to the data, the SPI for the under reviewed week in the above-mentioned group was witnessed at 315.31 points against 315.18 points during the earlier week.
While comparing to the corresponding week of the year 2023, the SPI for the combined consumption group in the under reviewed week recorded a surge of 30.68 percent.
The weekly SPI with the base year 2015-16 =100 covers 17 urban centres and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups.
Meanwhile, the SPI for the lowest consumption group up to Rs. 17,732, went down by 0.08 percent and decreased to 307.99 points from 307.73 points of the last week.
The SPI for consumption groups from Rs17,732-22,888 and Rs22,889-29,517 went down by 0.03 and 0.01 percent, while the SPI for the income groups Rs29,518-44,175 went up by 0.02 and over Rs44,175 by 0.09 respectively.
During the week, in 51 items, rates of 23 (45.10%) items witnessed an increase, 08 (21.51%) items went down and 20 (39.21%) items remained constant without a change.
Increase, Decrease in Basic Items’ Prices
The commodities, which observed a decline in their average prices on a week-on-week basis comprising onions (14.42%), eggs (11.19%), LPG (1.82%), cooking Oil 5 Litre (0.75%), wheat flour (0.36%), mustard oil (0.33%), potatoes (0.23%) and vegetable ghee 1 kg. (0.11%).
The basic items that witnessed an increase in their average rates on a week-on-week basis comprising tomatoes (22.71%), bananas (7.40%), diesel (3.02%), chicken (1.22%), petrol (1.00%), sugar (0.87%), mutton (0.86%), beef (0.74%), curd (0.71%), pulse moong (0.54%), firewood (0.20%) and georgette (0.14%).
On year-on-year basis, the items recorded increase in their respective prices comprising gas charges for (480.00%), tomatoes (199.93%), chilies powder (81.74%), wheat flour (65.29%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%), gents sandal (53.37%), sugar (50.84%), gur (48.96%), gur (48.96%), salt Powdered (39.97%), garlic (36.31%) energy saver (34.17%),
While, the rates for the basic items that recorded a decline comprising bananas (17.73%), vegetable ghee 1 KG (17.26%), mustard oil (15.98%), cooking oil 5 Litre (13.66%), vegetable Ghee 2.5 KG (12.02%), LPG (9.42%) and eggs (5.33%).
