ISLAMABAD: Weekly inflation touched a 20-week high at 34.49 percent on year-to-year basis, with expectations that it would go up to reach 40 percent in the next couple of weeks following another hike in petroleum rates and levy.
The 34.5pc jump in prices is the highest annual rise since the week ending Sept 15, 2022, when the SPI inflation was 40.6pc.
The items whose prices increased the most compared to the previous year were onions (up 556.36pc), chicken (90.9pc), eggs (81.7pc), diesel (81.4pc), petrol (68.8pc), tea (63.9pc), broken basmati rice (63.4pc), rice Irri-6/9 (62.4pc), pulse moong (61.1pc), bananas (57.4pc), gram pulse (53.2pc), bread (48.8pc), wheat flour (48.4pc), powdered salt (48.1pc), maash pulse (46.2pc), LPG (43.8pc), mustard oil (42.1pc), and washing soap (42pc).
On the other hand, prices of tomatoes (62pc), powdered chillies (15.3pc), electricity (12.3pc) and gur (0.27pc) dropped.
According to data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, the highest change was noted in the prices of garlic (17.1pc), gram pulse (7.1pc), bananas (4.8pc), chicken (4.4pc), mash pulse (3.9pc), masoor pulse (3.9pc), mustard oil (3.5pc), eggs (3.4pc), moong pulse (2.3pc), sugar (2.3pc), vegetable ghee (2.13pc), and broken basmati rice (2.12pc), LPG (17.6pc), petrol (16.2pc), and diesel (15.3pc).
The only commodity to register a decline in its price was potato, down 0.37 percent per kilogram.
The SPI increased by 1.71pc for the lowest-income group (i.e. people earning below Rs17,732 per month) and by 3.3pc for the group with a monthly income of more than Rs44,175, according to the PBS.
