SPI posts marginal decline

ISLAMABAD: Weekly inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), posted a decline of 0.16 per cent for the combined income group on a week-on-week basis ending Dec 1, mainly due to a fall in prices of vegetables, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday.

The SPI on a year-on-year basis for the period under review still recorded a surge of 30.56pc. The week-on-week decline has been noted for the first time after six consecutive increases in the SPI, indicating further easing in the overall inflation in the country.

The average price of tomatoes in the market ranges between Rs180 and Rs220 per kg while that of onions around Rs200 per kg. Similarly, the potato price ranges between Rs90 and Rs110 per kg.

In the food group, the items that saw the highest week-on-week decline in prices included tomatoes (12.26pc), onions (2.79pc), chicken (1.71pc), pulse gram (0.68pc), pulse masoor (0.64pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 Kg (0.38pc), vegetable ghee 1kg (0.12pc), cooking oil five-litre and gur (0.11pc) each. On the other hand, a major increase was observed in the prices of bananas (3.36pc), tea Lipton (1.72pc), potatoes (1.65pc), match box and salt powdered (1.32pc) each and rice Irri-6/9 (1.23pc).

In the non-food group, on a week-on-week basis, LPG declined 0.42pc.

On a year-on-year basis, the items whose prices jumped the most included onions (388.52pc), tomatoes (73.25pc), diesel (64.57pc), tea Lipton (62.61pc), salt powdered (55.29pc), petrol (53.85pc), pulse gram (52.71pc), gents sponge chappal (52.21pc), bananas (52.02pc), eggs (51.87pc), pulse moong (47.67pc), pulse mash (43.44pc) and mustard oil (42.51pc).