Weekly Inflation Remains Near 30% Due to Costly Gas, Food

The Sensitive Price Index (SPI) for the week ended on March 28, 2024, decreased by 0.09 percent, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 04 (7.84 percent) items increased, 18 (35.30 percent) items decreased and 29 (56.86 percent) items remained stable. The items prices of which increased during the period review include chicken (4.92 percent), eggs (1.61 percent), shirting (0.56 percent) and rice irri-6/9 (0.15 percent). Some of the items prices of which declined during the period under review include tomatoes (12.04 percent), wheat flour bag 20 kg (3.80 percent), garlic (2.59 percent), LPG (2.42 percent), onions (1.74 percent), potatoes (1.07 percent), bananas (0.77 percent), pulse gram (0.57 percent), sugar (0.49 percent), pulse masoor (0.34 percent), rice basmati broken (0.33 percent), mustard oil (0.31 percent), gur (0.24 percent), pulse moong (0.21 percent), and pulse mash (0.14 percent). However, the year-on-year trend depicts increase of 29.41 percent mainly due to increase in the prices of gas charges for Q1 (570 percent), chilies powder (86.05 percent), onions (78.98 percent), garlic (52.20 percent), gur (37.70 percent), chicken (37.57 percent), salt powder (33.29 percent), sugar (31.56 percent), energy saver (29.83 percent) and pulse mash (27.09 percent). While decrease was observed in the prices of cooking oil 5 litre (20.50 percent), bananas (20.20 percent), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (17.87 percent), vegetable ghee 1 kg (17.72 percent), mustard oil (14.02 percent), diesel (2.47 percent), wheat flour (0.27 percent) and cigarettes (0.06 percent).