Weekly inflation rises after a brief pause, fuelled by soaring food prices

KARACHI: Weekly inflation went up 0.11 percent week-on-week and 37.07 percent year-on-year during the seven-day period ended October 5, official data showed on Friday, rising after a week’s lull in response to higher petroleum and food prices.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) attributed the increase in SPI to the rise in prices of tomatoes (12.45 percent), onions (11.96 percent), LPG (3.11 percent), garlic (2.59 percent), potatoes (1.81 percent), cooked daal (1.27 percent), eggs (0.84 percent), firewood (0.76 percent), beef (0.53 percent), bread (0.52 percent), and long cloth (0.51 percent).

On the other hand, major decrease was observed in the prices of diesel (3.33 percent), chicken (2.78 percent), petrol (2.40 percent), pulse masoor (1.80 percent), pulse gram (1.73 percent), gur (1.14 percent), pulse moong (0.58 percent), pulse mash (0.33 percent), wheat flour (0.32 percent) and vegetable ghee (0.20 percent).

For the week under review, SPI was recorded at 282.00 points against 281.70 points registered last week and 205.73 points recorded during the week ended October 6, 2022. PBS compiles SPI via collecting prices of 51 essential items from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 19 (37.26 percent) items increased, 16 (31.37 percent) items decreased and 16 (45.10 percent) items remained stable. Although WoW SPI has remained below one percent in the last nine consecutive weeks, for the groups spending up to Rs17,732; Rs17,733-22,888; Rs22,889-29,517; Rs29,518-44,175; and above Rs44,175; YoY SPI now stands at 35.21, 38.08, 37.56, 36.68, and 33.35 percent, respectively.

PBS data showed that the highest increase in SPI was faced by those spending Rs17,733-22,888, while the lowest impact was witnessed by those spending more than Rs44,175. According to analysts, the numbers were in line with expectations; however, for ordinary Pakistani’s life has become unsustainable.

A vegetable vendor said his independence was compromised because of the uncontrolled price hike. “Government slashed the price of petrol and diesel, but the transportation mafia has not brought prices down,” he said, lamenting that transporting vegetables from the main sabzi mandi on the Super Highway was proving very expensive. “People are compromising on food intake, I can tell by the drop in my sales,” he added.

Different weightages are assigned to various commodities in the SPI basket. Commodities with the highest weights for the lowest quintile include milk (17.5449 percent), electricity (8.3627 percent), wheat flour (6.1372 percent), sugar (5.1148 percent), firewood (5.0183 percent), long cloth (4.2221 percent), and vegetable ghee (3.2833 percent).

Of these commodities, prices of milk, sugar, firewood, and long cloth increased; wheat flour, and vegetable ghee prices declined; while only the price of electricity remained the same.

The YoY trend depicts increase of 37.07 percent, electricity charges for Q1 (118.16 percent), gas charges for Q1 (108.38 percent), cigarettes (94.69 percent), broken basmati rice (87.60 percent), chilli powder (84.84 percent), sugar (79.55 percent), rice irri-6/9 (78.69 percent), wheat flour (77.91 percent), gur (67.68 percent), tea (60.72 percent), gents sponge chappal (58.05 percent), salt (56.48 percent), garlic (54.78 percent), gents sandal (53.37 percent), petrol (43.70 percent), and potatoes (42.99 percent).

The PBS noted a YoY decline in the prices of tomatoes (54.05 percent), onions (18.21 percent), pulse gram (2.67 percent), and mustard oil (0.16 percent).