Pakistan’s Short-Term Inflation Down to Lowest Level in Almost 2 Years

The Sensitive Price Index (SPI)-based inflation for the current week ended on May 16, 2024, decreased by 1.06 percent. The decline was due to a decrease in the prices of tomatoes (31.18 percent), onions (21.84 percent), garlic (7.76 percent), petrol (5.32 percent), wheat flour & LPG (3.66 percent) each, diesel (2.79 percent), rice basmati broken (1.52 percent), chilies powder (1.31 percent), pulse masoor (1.08 percent) and bananas (0.87 percent). On the other hand, major increase was observed in the prices of cooked daal (1.96 percent), shirting (1.74 percent), potatoes (1.46 percent), beef (1.11 percent), mutton (1.04 percent), pulse gram (1.00 percent), energy saver, long cloth & eggs (0.73 percent) each, cooked beef (0.50 percent) and chicken (0.30 percent). The year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 21.22 percent, the major contributors of the increase were gas charges for Q1 (570.00 percent), onions (87.82 percent), chilies powder (69.71 percent), garlic (61.86 percent), tomatoes (35.65 percent), salt powder (32.72 percent), shirting (31.65 percent), energy saver (27.94 percent), gents sandal (25.01 percent), beef (24.36 percent), pulse mash (22.52 percent) and sugar (20.58 percent) While a decrease was observed in the prices of bananas (39.37 percent), wheat flour (29.85 percent), chicken (25.62 percent), cooking oil 5 Litre (19.65 percent), vegetable ghee 1 Kg (16.42 percent), vegetable ghee 2.5 Kg (16.07 percent), mustard oil (12.84 percent), LPG (11.11 percent) and eggs (9.32 percent). At 21.22 percent, this marks the lowest SPI since June 02, 2022, (20.04 percent YoY), according to Arif Habib Limited (AHL). During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 20 (39.22 percent) items increased, 16 (31.37 percent) items decreased and 15 (29.41 percent) items remained stable.