Consumer prices witnessed an increase in the outgoing week on the back of wheat flour, chicken, potatoes, pulses and powdered milk, taking the weekly inflation to 48.35% on an annual basis, the official data showed.
The short-term inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), for the current week ended on May 4, 2023 recorded an increase of 1.50%, said Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in its report.
Major increase was observed in the prices of food items, Chicken (8.91%), Potatoes (3.99%), Powdered Milk (3.81%), Pulse Gram (1.96%), Pulse Masoor (1.83%), Eggs (1.81%), Mutton (1.71%), Pulse Mash (1.58%), Cooked Daal (1.36%), and Bread (1.13%), non-food items, Gents Sponge Chappal (58.05%), Gents Sandal (33.36%), Ladies Sandal (14.31%) and Washing Soap (1.27%), the report said.
Meanwhile, a decline was witnessed in the prices of Onions (16.69%), Garlic (3.44%), Tomatoes (3.41%), Diesel (1.70%), Mustard Oil (0.99%), LPG (0.96%), Cooking Oil 5 litre (0.40%) and vegetable ghee 2.5kg & 1kg (0.10%) each.
The year on year trend depicts an increase of 48.35 with as uptick was witnessed in prices of wheat flour (177.61%), cigarettes (146.44%), potatoes (123.00%), gas charges for Q1 (108.38%), Tea Lipton (104.28%), gents sponge shappal (100.33%), diesel (99.39%), eggs (95.45%), rice basmati broken (89.31%), bananas (87.86%), petrol (87.81%), rice irri-6/9 (84.43%), pulse moong (68.44%), bread (62.83%) and pulse mash (60.59%).
However, decrease was observed in the prices of Tomatoes (50.09%), Onions (10.03%) and Chilies Powdered (6.48%).—Agencies
