Weekly Inflation Remains Over 41% Due to Costly Gas

The Sensitive Price Index (SPI)-based inflation for the current week, ended 23 November 2023, decreased by 0.06 percent, according to the latest data issued by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). The year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 41.13 percent mainly due to an increase in the prices of gas charges for Q1 (1108.59 percent), cigarettes (94.20 percent), wheat flour (88.18 percent), chilies powder (81.74 percent), rice basmati broken (76.57 percent), garlic (71.03 percent), and rice irri-6/9 (62.28 percent), while decrease was observed in the prices of onions (36.18 percent), tomatoes (18.10 percent), mustard oil (4.06 percent) and vegetable ghee 1 kg (2.85 percent). During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 18 (35.29 percent) items increased, 12 (23.53 percent) items decreased and 21 (41.18 percent) items remained stable. Some of the items prices of which increased during the period review include garlic (4.61 percent), onions (2.42 percent), chicken (1.81 percent), potatoes (1.69 percent), pulse masoor (1.01 percent), LPG (0.76 percent), firewood whole 40 kg (0.59 percent), wheat flour bag 20 kg (0.54 percent), match box each (0.52 percent), pulse moong (0.52 percent), bread plain (0.47 percent), pulse mash (0.40 percent), pulse gram (0.36 percent), beef with bone (0.29 percent), rice irri-6/9 (0.26 percent), and mustard oil (0.14 percent). The items, prices of which decreased during the period under review, including tomatoes (5.78 percent), vegetable ghee dalda/habib 2.5 kg tin each (1.36 percent), cooking oil dalda or other similar brand (sn), 5 litre tin each (1.31 percent), bananas (0.91 percent), vegetable ghee dalda/habib or other superior quality 1 kg pouch each (0.82 percent), eggs (0.33 percent), and sugar (0.20 percent).