Weekly Inflation Crosses 43% as Gas, Food Prices Soar

The Sensitive Price Index (SPI)-based inflation for the week ended December 28, 2023, increased by 43.25 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said Friday. This is the seventh successive week where the weekly inflation reading has remained over 40 percent on a year-on-year basis. The YoY trend depicts an increase mainly due to increase in the prices of gas charges for Q1 (1108.59 percent), cigarettes (93.22 percent), chilies powder (81.74 percent), wheat flour bag (73.81 percent), garlic (70.67 percent), tomatoes (65.26 percent), rice irri-6/9 (58.49 percent), rice basmati broken (58.47 percent), and sugar (54.25percent) while decrease was observed in the prices of onions (12.57 percent), mustard oil (5.16 percent), vegetable ghee 1 kg (1.14 percent) and bananas (0.20 percent). During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 15 (29.41 percent) items increased, 09 (17.65 percent) items decreased and 27 (52.94 percent) items remained stable. The SPI for the week under review increased by 0.37 percent over the previous week (wee-on-week basis). The items’ prices of which increased during the period review include onions (15.21 percent), chicken (4.76 percent), pulse moong (2.90 percent), pulse gram (2.89 percent), sugar (1.35 percent), bananas (1.05 percent), pulse masoor (0.78 percent), pulse mash (0.54 percent), firewood whole 40 kg (0.31 percent), mutton (0.24 percent), beef with bone (0.24 percent), rice basmati broken (0.24 percent), LPG (0.21 percent), tea prepared (0.07 percent) and cooked beef (0.03 percent). The items prices of which decreased during the period under review include potatoes (8.66 percent), tomatoes (1.01 percent), vegetable ghee dalda/habib 2.5 kg tin each (0.61 percent), cooking oil dalda or other similar brand (sn), 5 litre tin each (0.44 percent), eggs (0.40 percent), mustard oil (0.24 percent), gur (0.19 percent), garlic (0.15 percent) and wheat flour bag 20 kg (0.06 percent).