No Respite for Public as Weekly Inflation Crosses 43%

The Sensitive Price Index (SPI)-based inflation for the week ended December 14, 2023, increased by over 43 percent on a year-on-year basis, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). However, the SPI for the current week decreased by 0.06 percent over the previous week due to a decline in the prices of potatoes (12.18 percent), tomatoes (5.18 percent), and chicken (1.19 percent). The year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 43.16 percent mainly due to an increase in the prices of gas charges for q1 (1108.59 percent), cigarettes (93.22 percent, chilies powder (81.74 percent), wheat flour (81.40 percent), garlic (71.17 percent), rice basmati broken (64.30 percent), rice irri-6/9 (60.64 percent), sugar (50.52 percent), gur (50.42 percent), and pulse mash (44.80 percent) while a decrease was observed in the prices of onions (25.11 percent), mustard oil (4.40 percent), vegetable ghee 1 kg (2.12 percent), bananas (1.05 percent) and vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.95 percent). During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 19 (37.26 percent) items increased, 10 (19.60 percent) items decreased and 22 (43.14 percent) items remained stable. The items, prices of which increased during the period review, include sugar (6.02 percent), pulse gram (2.57 percent), eggs (2.33 percent), rice irri-6/9 (1.54 percent), pulse moong (1.23 percent), onions (1.05 percent), cooked beef (0.76 percent), pulse masoor (0.69 percent), cooked daal (0.54 percent), salt powdered (0.47 percent), tea prepared (0.23 percent), and pulse mash (0.09 percent). The items, prices of which decreased during the period under review, include potatoes (12.18 percent), tomatoes (5.18 percent), chicken (1.19 percent), rice basmati broken (0.52 percent), mustard oil (0.36 percent), garlic (0.33 percent), and bananas (0.12 percent).