Weekly inflation increases to 31.83 per cent 

According to data provided by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, weekly inflation, as assessed by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), reported an increase of 31.83 percent for the combined income group for the week ending January 19 when compared to the same period last year.

On a week-to-week basis, the SPI, however, showed no change. This was primarily caused by an increase in food items over the previous few weeks, particularly veggies like onions.

Based on a study of 50 markets in 17 cities across the nation, the SPI tracks the costs of 51 necessities. Out of 51 items, 23 had price increases during the week under review, 11 saw price decreases, and 17 saw no change.

n a year-on-year basis, the items whose prices jumped included:

• 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)
• wheat flour (46.38pc)

A major increase on a week-on-week increase was observed 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)
• washing soap (1.54pc)

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)
• mustard oil (0.01pc)