ISLAMABAD: The sensitive price index (SPI) posts a surge of 31.83pc in prices. The prices did not increase on week-on-week basis. The massive increase in prices posted on Jan 19 was on year-on-year basis. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) released the data for the combined income group on Friday.
The SPI posts surge in prices of both food and non-food items is responsible for the increase. This was mainly because of an increase in food items, especially vegetables like onions, over the past few weeks.
Sensitive Price Index
The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) assesses the price movement of essential consumer items at short intervals such as on weekly basis. This helps government in adopting corrective measures.
The SPI monitors the prices of 51 essential items based on a survey of 50 markets in 17 cities across the country. During the week under review, the prices of 23 out of 51 items increased, 11 decreased, and 17 remained stable.
Price Hike of essential Food Items
Dawn news reports that on a year-on-year basis, the prices of onions (482.07pc), chicken (101.93pc), tea Lipton (65.41pc), eggs (64.23pc), diesel (57.34pc), rice basmati broken (56.09pc), pulse moong (55.63pc), rice Irri-6/9 (50.28pc), salt powdered (49.50pc), bananas (47.73pc) and wheat flour (46.38pc) jumped massively .
Week-on-Week increase
In week-on-week basis major increase occured in the prices of rice basmati broken (3.54pc), onions (3.50pc), chicken (3.21pc), bananas (3.04pc), rice Irri-6/9 (2.43pc), garlic (2.16pc), bread (1.45pc), cooked beef (1.26pc), tea prepared (1.22pc), cooked daal (1.12pc), LPG (2.34pc) and washing soap (1.54pc).
Prices fell too
A decrease was observed in the prices of wheat flour (5.98pc), tomatoes (2.87pc), potatoes (2.73pc), sugar (0.94pc), vegetable ghee 1kg (0.50pc), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (0.41pc), pulse masoor (0.38pc), eggs (0.09pc), cooking oil 5-litre (0.07pc), pulse gram (0.05pc) and mustard oil (0.01pc).
