ISLAMABAD: Country’s Short-term inflation has reached an all-time high with the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) rising to 45.36 percent for the combined income group on a year-on-year basis for the week ending March 22.
According to data compiled by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the SPI is expected to intensify even further as the worse impact of inflation in the wake of Ramazan and other factors is yet to reflect in official data.
The rising demand for food is expected to result in even higher prices in the coming weeks. The SPI data shows that out of 51 items, prices of 23 items have soared, while those of 11 items decreased. However, the rates of 17 items remained unchanged.
Despite this, the SPI has dropped 0.36 percent week-on-week, thanks to a slight decline in the prices of onions, tomatoes, and cooking oil. This is owing to a persistent increase for three consecutive weeks.
The rising inflation is expected to put further pressure on the already struggling Pakistani economy. The government has announced measures to curb inflation, but it remains to be seen whether they will have any impact. The current situation is likely to have a significant impact on the daily lives of people, especially those with lower incomes, who will struggle to afford basic necessities.
The data shows that during the week under review, the items whose prices increased the most over the same week a year ago were cigarettes (165.88pc), onions (127.07pc), wheat flour (123.22pc), gas charges for Q1 (108.38pc), diesel (102.84pc), tea Lipton (98.08pc), eggs (96.67pc), bananas (94.89pc), rice basmati broken (83.65pc), petrol (81.17pc), rice Irri-6/9 (79.17pc), pulse moong (67.85pc) and potatoes (56.44pc).
On a week-on-week basis, the biggest change was observed in the prices of bananas (7.54pc), eggs (7.22pc), mutton (2.39pc), sugar (2.12pc), wheat flour (1.91pc), tea Lipton (1.79pc), georgette & shirting (1.32pc) each, milk fresh (1.12pc) and beef (1.02pc).
Products whose prices dropped the most over the previous week were onions (15.10pc), chicken (11.96pc), tomatoes (10.26pc), cooking oil 5 litre (1.24pc), vegetable ghee 1 Kg (1.07pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 Kg (0.77pc), pulse gram (0.42pc), pulse moong (0.22pc), mustard oil (0.17pc), LPG (1.35pc) and firewood (0.35pc).
