According to official statistics released on Friday, prices rose at their fastest pace in more than four months in the outgoing week, mostly due to rises in the cost of food and petroleum.
Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) data showed that as a result, short-term inflation increased from the previous week’s 32.6 per cent to 34.5 per cent on an annual basis for the week that ended on February 2, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
The week-on-week inflation figure also jumped to 2.8 per cent from 0.45 per cent a week ago. Of the 51 items tracked, prices of 32 items increased, one item decreased, whereas those of 18 items remained unchanged.
The 34.5 per cent surge in prices is the highest increase since the week ending Sept 15, 2022, when the SPI inflation was recorded at 40.6 per cent.
The items whose prices increased the most compared to the previous year were onions (up 556.36 per cent), chicken (90.9 per cent), eggs (81.7 per cent), diesel (81.4 per cent), petrol (68.8 per cent), tea (63.9 per cent), broken basmati rice (63.4 per cent), rice Irri-6/9 (62.4 per cent), pulse moong (61.1 per cent), bananas (57.4 per cent), gram pulse (53.2 per cent), bread (48.8 per cent), wheat flour (48.4 per cent), powdered salt (48.1 per cent), maash pulse (46.2 per cent), LPG (43.8 per cent), mustard oil (42.1 per cent), and washing soap (42 per cent).
Prices of tomatoes (62 per cent), powdered chillies (15.3 per cent), electricity (12.3 per cent) and gur (0.27 per cent) dropped.
On a week-on-week basis, the highest change was noted in the prices of garlic (17.1 per cent), gram pulse (7.1 per cent), bananas (4.8 per cent), chicken (4.4 per cent), mash pulse (3.9 per cent), masoor pulse (3.9 per cent), mustard oil (3.5 per cent), eggs (3.4 per cent), moong pulse (2.3 per cent), sugar (2.3 per cent), vegetable ghee (2.13 per cent), and broken basmati rice (2.12 per cent), LPG (17.6 per cent), petrol (16.2 per cent), and diesel (15.3 per cent).
The SPI increased by 1.71 per cent for the lowest-income group (i.e. people earning below Rs17,732 per month) and by 3.3 per cent for the group with a monthly income of more than Rs44,175, according to the PBS.
