Pakistan’s weekly inflation continued its upward trend, with the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) increasing by 0.53 percent for the combined consumption group during the week ending November 13, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
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The latest PBS report shows the SPI rising to 335.31 points from 333.55 points a week earlier. On a year-on-year basis, the index recorded a 4.15 percent increase. The SPI, based on the 2015–16 index year, tracks prices of 51 essential items across 17 urban centres for all expenditure groups.
For the lowest income bracket — households spending up to Rs17,732 — the SPI rose by 0.35 percent, reaching 328.89 points compared to 327.73 points last week. Other expenditure groups also saw increases: 0.43 percent for Rs17,733–22,888; 0.44 percent for Rs22,889–29,517; 0.51 percent for Rs29,518–44,175; and 0.58 percent for households spending above Rs44,175.
During the week, prices of 15 essential items (29.41%) increased, 12 items (23.53%) decreased, while 24 items (47.06%) remained unchanged.
Notable weekly price hikes were recorded in chicken (20.33%), tomatoes (12.03%), bananas (2.32%), LPG (1.97%), potatoes (1.08%), and cooking oil (0.38%). Smaller increases were observed in shirting, pulse masoor, firewood, beef, and mutton.
Items with significant weekly declines included onions (6.65%), pulse gram (2.61%), powdered salt (1.80%), gur (1.78%), sugar (1.07%), wheat flour (0.69%), pulse mash (0.66%), and pulse moong (0.27%).
On a year-on-year basis, the steepest price surges were seen in ladies’ sandals (55.62%), sugar (40.25%), gas charges for Q1 (29.85%), wheat flour (18.70%), gur (16.47%), beef (14.29%), firewood (12.23%), bananas (11.71%), vegetable ghee (10.93%), diesel, cooking oil (8.43%), and mutton (8.16%).
Meanwhile, major year-on-year price drops were recorded in garlic (36.29%), pulse gram (29.89%), electricity charges for Q1 (26.26%), tomatoes (23.01%), potatoes (22.46%), tea (17.79%), pulse mash (15.35%), LPG (11.00%), pulse masoor (5.40%), and rice IRRI-6/9 (3.02%).
