Weekly inflation slides by 1.37%

March 18, 2022 (MLN): Following the last four consecutive weekly jumps, the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the combined consumption group witnessed a decline of 1.37% for the week ended on March 17, 2022, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported Friday.

As per the PBS inflation report, this fall was mainly on account of a decrease in the price of essential food items, electricity charges and LPG.

The combined index clocked in at 169.06 compared to 171.41 on March 10, 2022.

However, the year-on-year trend observed a surge of 15.12% when the index was recorded at 146.86 a year ago, on March 18, 2021.

Out of the 51 monitored items, the average price of 09 items registered a decrease in the week that include tomatoes (12.04%), chicken (8.39%), garlic (2.04%), sugar (0.49%), potatoes (0.41%), pulse gram (0.31%) and pulse mash (0.14%), electricity charges for q1 (9.81%) and LPG (1.58%).

Meanwhile, 29 commodities witnessed an increase in prices on a WoW basis, including vegetable ghee 1 kg (6.25%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (4.56%), cooking oil 5 litre (3.62%), lawn (3.14%), shirting (2.57%), onions (2.06%), georgette (2.00%), cooked beef (1.98%), long cloth (1.82%), bananas (1.76%), match box (1.60%), eggs (1.39%), mustard oil (1.27%) and mutton (1.03%) and 13 items remained stable.

The weekly SPI percentage change by income groups showed that SPI dropped across all quantiles, ranging between -0.92% and -1.61%.

The lowest income group saw a weekly fall of 0.99% while the highest income group recorded a decline of 1.23%.

On a yearly basis, analysis of SPI change across different income segments showed that SPI increased across all quantiles ranging between 12.41% and 16.18%.

Yearly SPI for the lowest income group increased by 12.41% while the highest income group recorded an increase of 16.18%.

The average price of sona urea stood at Rs1,934 per 50 kg bag which is around 0.26% higher than last week’s price and 10.59% higher when compared to last year.

Going by the PBS report, the average cement price was recorded at Rs862 per 50 kg bag, depicting a surge of 9.49% WoW, while increasing by 41.34% YoY.

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