Weekly Inflation Remains Above 40 percent for 7th Straight Week

Weekly inflation remained above the 40 percent barrier for the seventh straight week and stood at 45.49 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the week ended on April 6, 2023, showed data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PSB) on Friday. The year-on-year trend depicts an increase mainly due to an increase in the prices of cigarettes (165.88 percent), wheat flour (131.72 percent), gas charges for Q1 (108.38 percent), diesel (102.84 percent), eggs (98.34 percent), tea lipton (97.63 percent), rice basmati broken (84.92 percent), bananas (82.23 percent), petrol (81.17 percent), rice irri-6/9 (80.61 percent), pulse moong (68.14 percent), potatoes (65.95 percent), pulse mash (56.70 percent) and onions (55.75 percent), while a decrease was observed in the prices of tomatoes (50.39 percent) and chillies powdered (6.48 percent). The SPI for the week under review recorded an increase of 0.92 percent over the previous week. A major increase was observed in the prices of food items, chicken (15.87 percent), sugar (13.48 percent), potatoes (5.11 percent), bananas (4.95 percent), wheat flour (3.10 percent), gur (2.12 percent), eggs (1.26 percent), milk fresh (1.24 percent) and non-food item, long cloth (1.95 percent). On the other hand, decrease was observed in the prices of tomatoes (14.96 percent), onions (12.66 percent), LPG (3.73 percent), pulse gram (1.20 percent), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.71 percent), garlic (0.16 percent) and mustard oil (0.03 percent). The SPI is computed on weekly basis to assess the price movement of essential commodities at shorter intervals of time so as to review the price situation in the country. SPI comprises 51 essential items collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country. During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 27 (52.94 percent) items increased, 07 (13.73 percent) items decreased and 17 (33.33 percent) items remained stable.