The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation decreased slightly by 0.08 percent while it went 18.47 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.
According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the SPI-based weekly inflation registered a decrease for the week ended on February 10, 2022, after registering a massive increase of 1.35 percent in the preceding week.
The weekly inflation for the lowest income group witnessed a decrease of 0.24 percent, while it went up by 20.25 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same group. However, for other income groups (Q2-Q5), it went down from 0.04 percent to 0.19 percent for the week ended on February 10, 2022, and increased from 16.65 percent to 18.72 on a year-on-year (YoY) basis for the same groups.
According to the PBS, the combined index was at 169.23 on February 10, 2022 as compared to 169.37 on February 03, 2022 while the index was recorded at 142.85 a year ago on February 11, 2021.
The SPI is computed on a weekly basis to assess the price movements of essential commodities at a shorter interval of time so as to review the price situation in the country. The SPI comprises 51 essential items and the prices are being collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country. During the week under review, out of 51 items, prices of 16 (31.37%) items increased, prices of 14 (27.45%) items decreased, and prices of 21 (41.18%) items remained stable.
The SPI for the current week recorded a decrease in the prices of food items including tomatoes (14.86%), chillies powdered (3.30%), potatoes (2.92%), onions (2.66%), eggs (2.05%), sugar (1.43%), pulse Moong (0.99%), tea prepared (0.50%), pulse gram (0.48%), gur (0.39%), pulse Mash (0.37%), wheat flour (0.15%).—TLTP