Islamabad, March 22: Inflation, as measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), recorded a decline of 1.2% year-on-year for the week ending March 20, primarily due to a drop in the prices of perishable goods.
This marks the third consecutive week of decline in SPI-based inflation. On a week-on-week basis, the SPI decreased by 0.35%, according to official data released on Friday.
The overall short-term inflation rate has slowed in part due to the high base of last year. Additionally, prices for most items remained stable, except for wheat flour.
Inflation had peaked at a record 48.35% year-on-year in early May 2023, but then decreased to 24.4% by late August 2023. However, it surged back above 40% during the week ending November 16, 2023.
Declining Price Items
Some of the items that saw a decline in prices week-on-week included tomatoes (down by 7.08%), onions (down by 6.07%), garlic (down by 5.59%), eggs (down by 4.64%), potatoes (down by 2.50%), pulse gram (down by 1.60%), tea Lipton (down by 1.30%), sugar (down by 0.87%), and firewood (down by 0.60%).
On the other hand, prices of the following items increased the most week-on-week: lawn printed (up by 2.90%), LPG (up by 1.53%), bananas (up by 1.45%), long cloth (up by 1.23%), bread (up by 0.55%), cigarettes (up by 0.27%), beef (up by 0.25%), curd (up by 0.24%), and salt powder (up by 0.03%).
Annual Change
Looking at the annual changes, certain items saw significant price increases, including ladies sandals (up by 75.09%), pulse moong (up by 26.96%), powdered milk (up by 25.75%), beef (up by 21.01%).
Moreover, sugar (up by 18.65%), chicken (up by 18.23%), pulse gram (up by 17.83%), vegetable ghee (up by 16.13%), bananas (up by 15.73%), lawn printed (up by 12.28%), shirting (up by 12.20%), and georgette (up by 11.20%).
In contrast, the prices of onions, wheat flour, tomatoes, chili powder, electricity charges for Q1, tea Lipton, pulse mash, pulse masoor, basmati broken rice, diesel, petrol, and LPG all saw notable annual price drops.
Onions dropped by 67.67%, wheat flour by 35.58%, tomatoes by 29.45%, chili powder by 20%, and tea Lipton by 16.98%.
The data also revealed that, while 11 items saw price increases and 18 saw price decreases compared to the previous week, 22 items remained stable in price.
Despite falling global prices, the retail prices of sugar and edible oil saw increases in the domestic market.
The government permitted a significant rise in sugar exports, allowing 757,779 tonnes in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, compared to just 33,101 tonnes during the same period last year, marking a 2,188% increase.
