Weekly inflation goes 0.82pc up

ISLAMABAD: The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation for the week ended on 20th May, 2021 for the combined consumption group, witnessed an increase of 0.82 percent as compared to the previous week while it went 17.23 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, the combined index was at 150.23 compared to 149.01 on May 13, 2021 while the index was recorded at 128.15 a year ago, on May 21, 2020.
During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 25 (49.0%) items increased, 07 (13.7%) items decreased and 19 (37.3%) items remained constant.
The SPI is computed on a weekly basis to assess the price movements of essential commodities at a shorter interval of time so as to review the price situation in the country. The SPI comprises 51 essential items and the prices are being collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.
The SPI for the current week ended on 20th May, 2021 recorded an increase in the prices of chicken (12.74%), bananas (11.26%), onions (6.97%), eggs (5.36%), sugar (3.35%), bread plain (3.30%), wheat flour (3.01%), beef (2.07%), cooked beef (1.32%), garlic (1.31%), mustard oil (1.21%) and mutton (1.18%) with joint impact of (1.33%) into the overall SPI for combined group of (0.82%).
On the other hand decrease in the prices of tomatoes (17.96%), electricity for Q1 (3.24%), pulse Moong (0.92%), LPG (0.26%), rice Irri 6/9 (0.11%), Pulse Masoor (0.06%) and potatoes (0.02%).
The year on year trend depicts increase of 17.05% with most of the items increased mainly Chilies powder (129.95%), electricity for Q1 (61.62%), eggs (56.05%), chicken (57.77%), diesel (38.03%), mustard oil (33.88%), gents sandal (33.37%), petrol (32.96%), match box (31.64%), bananas (31.28%) and wheat flour (29.37%), while a major decrease was observed in the prices of garlic (36.34%), onions (24.76%), pulse Moong (20.34%), Potatoes (18.25%), Tomatoes (7.12%), pulse Masoor (5.77%) and LPG (0.79%).
The weekly SPI percentage change by income groups showed that SPI increased across all quantiles ranging between 0.62% and 1.03%. – TLTP