Weekly SPI jumps by 1%

March 25, 2022 (MLN): The weekly Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the combined consumption group witnessed an increase of 1.10% for the week ended on March 24, 2022, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported Friday.

As per the PBS inflation report, this surge was mainly on account of an increase in the price of essential food items.

The combined index clocked in at 170.92 compared to 169.06 on March 17, 2022.

Similarly, the year-on-year trend observed a surge of 15.67% when the index was recorded at 147.76 a year ago, on March 25, 2021.

Out of the 51 monitored items, the average price of 25 items registered an increase in the week that include chicken (8.47%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (4.59%), bananas (4.04%), cooking oil (2.55%), potatoes (1.56%), vegetable ghee 1 kg (1.12%), curd (1.02%), lawn (1.17%) and shirting (1.03%).

Meanwhile, 08 commodities witnessed a decline in prices on a WoW basis, including garlic (4.94%), tomatoes (4.17%), eggs (4.13%), LPG (1.59%), gur (1.03%), sugar (0.92%), pulse gram (0.36%) and pulse masoor (0.22%) and 18 items remained stable.

The weekly SPI percentage change by income groups showed that SPI jumped across all quantiles, ranging between 0.95% and 1.31%.

The lowest income group saw a weekly rise of 1.24% while the highest income group recorded an upsurge of 0.95%.

On a yearly basis, analysis of SPI change across different income segments showed that SPI increased across all quantiles ranging between 13.22% and 16.58%.

Yearly SPI for the lowest income group increased by 13.22% while the highest income group recorded an increase of 16.58%.

The average price of sona urea stood at Rs1,973 per 50 kg bag which is around 2.02% higher than last week’s price and 12.41% higher when compared to last year.

Going by the PBS report, the average cement price remained the same at Rs862 per 50 kg bag, while increasing by 41.22% YoY.

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