TAHIR AMIN

ISLAMABAD: The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the week ended April 29, 2021 recorded an increase of 0.05 percent over the last week due to increase in the prices of food items including bananas (8.67 percent), wheat flour bag (2.29 percent), and potatoes (2.11 percent), says the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). 

The year-on-year trend depicts increase of 16.90 percent with most of the items increased mainly chilies powder (139.64 percent), chicken (67.16 percent), electricity for Q1 (67.03 percent), eggs (58.32 percent), gents sandal (33.37 percent), mustard oil (31.43 percent), match box (30.47 percent), gents sponge chappal (25.13 percent), bananas (25.10 percent), wheat flour bag (24.25 percent), and vegetable ghee (22.50 percent), while a major decrease was observed in the prices of onions (40.59 percent), garlic (36.62 percent), moong (19.75 percent), potatoes (12.61 percent), masoor (10.91 percent), and pulse gram (5.54 percent). According to the latest data, the SPI went up from 148.20 points during the week ended April 22, 2021 to 148.27 percent during the week under review. The SPI for the consumption groups up to Rs17,733, from Rs17,733 to Rs22,888, Rs22,889 to Rs29,517 and Rs29,518 to Rs44,175 increased by 0.15 percent, 0.15 percent 0.15 percent and 0.10 percent respectively while for above Rs44,175 per month it decreased by 0.02 percent.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 12 (23.5 percent) items increased, nine (17.7 percent) items decreased and 30 (58.8 percent) items remained constant, said the PBS in weekly SPI data.

The commodities, which recorded increase in their average prices include bananas (8.67 percent), wheat flour bag 20 kg (2.29 percent), potatoes (2.11 percent), toilet soap Lifebuoy 115 gm each (0.76 percent), sugar refined 1kg (0.76 percent), mutton (0.73 percent), pulse gram (0.71 percent), cooked beef (0.66 percent), beef with bone (0.64 percent), rice basmati broken (0.58 percent), pulse masoor (0.33 percent), and gur (0.18 percent). 

According to the PBS, decrease was observed in the price of tomatoes (17.15 percent), onions (4.19 percent), eggs (3.98 percent), LPG (2.61 percent), chicken farm broiler (0.70 percent), garlic (0.57 percent), moong (0.42 percent), maash (0.30 percent), and mustard oil (0.10 percent).