ISLAMABAD According to official data released on Friday, short-term inflation, as gauged by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), increased by 29.45% year over year in the week ending April 4 mostly as a result of rising gas prices.
It increased by 0.96 percent from week to week.
Next week’s review will show the true effect of the increase in gas prices on necessities. However, the price of perishable goods increased somewhat due to shipping expenses.
For the last eighteen weeks, the SPI has stayed above 30 percent.
The SPI fell in March following a steady 11-week stretch of inflation above 40 percent, which increased from 29 percent on November 8, 2023. Weekly inflation reached a record high of 48.35 percent year over year in early May 2023, but it then began to decline as low as 24.4 percent in late August 2023 until hitting 40 percent in the final week of November 16, 2023.
Ladies sandals (12.52%), tomatoes (11.93%), men’s sandals (8.70%), petrol (3.45%), chicken (2.99%), long cloth (2.23%), onion (1.30%), bread (1.03%), beef (0.75%), garlic (0.70%), mutton (0.41%), and broken basmati rice (0.14%) were among the products whose prices increased week over week.
Bananas (3.57 percent), wheat flour (2.68 percent), eggs and LPG (1.89 percent), fuel (1.18 percent), gur (0.63 percent), sugar (0.41 percent), mustard oil (0.26 percent), pulse masoor (0.25 percent), and potatoes (0.23 percent) were the products whose prices dropped the greatest over the previous week.
Gas costs for Q1 (570pc), onions (107.59pc), chilli powder (86.05pc), men’s sandals (66.71pc), men’s sponge chappal (58.05pc), garlic (53.51pc), tomatoes (35.77pc), gur (34pc), salt powder (32.78pc), energy saver (29.83pc), pulse mash (26.98pc), and tea prepared (23.34pc) were, however, the items whose prices increased the most annually.
Banana prices fell by 26.68 percent, while the prices of cooking oil (20.53 percent), vegetable ghee (1 kg) and 2.5 kg (17.28 percent), mustard oil (14.22 percent), wheat flour (5.86 percent), petrol (3.61 percent), and cigarettes (0.06 percent) all decreased.
The SPI was 326.29, down from 252.06 a year ago and 323.20 the week before.
The index, which consists of 51 goods gathered from 50 markets spread across 17 locations, is calculated on a weekly basis to evaluate the costs of necessities at more frequent intervals. According to the data, sixteen items had higher prices, thirteen had lower prices, and twenty-two had unchanged prices from the previous week.
