The weekly inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), witnessed an increase of 0.96 percent for the combined consumption group during the week ended on March 16 to reach 45.64 percent, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reported Friday.

The SPI for the week under review in the above-mentioned group was recorded at 246.22 points as compared to 243.87 points during the past week, according to PBS data. As compared to the corresponding week of last year, the SPI for the combined consumption group in the week under review witnessed an increase of 45.64 percent.

The weekly SPI with the base year 2015-16 =100 is covering 17 urban centres and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups. The SPI for the lowest consumption group up to Rs17,732 witnessed a 0.59 percent increase and went up to 250.37 points from last week’s 248.90 points.

Meanwhile, the SPI for the consumption group from Rs 17,732-22-888; Rs 22,889-29,517; Rs 29,518-44,175; and above Rs 44,175 witnessed an increase of 0.66 percent, 0.78 percent, 0.83 percent, and 1.40 percent respectively.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 28 (54.90%) items increased, 11 (21.57%) items decreased and 12 (23.53%) items remained stable.

The items that recorded an increase in their average prices on a week-on-week (wow) basis included tomatoes (18.06%), tea packet (9.26%), potatoes (4.52%), bananas (4.00%), sugar (2.70%), wheat flour (2.40%), cooking oil 5 litre (1.20%) and vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (1.16%), lawn (5.77%), diesel (4.65%), shirting (2.80%) and petrol (1.84%).

The items which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week (WoW) included onions (15.91%), chicken (5.97%), garlic (5.73%), pulse Masoor (2.27%), eggs (2.26%), LPG (1.90%), vegetable ghee 1 kg (1.39%), pulse gram (1.24%), pulse mash (1.08%), pulse moong (0.84%) and mustard oil (0.64%).

On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the commodities that witnessed an increase in prices included onions (233.89%), cigarettes (165.86%), gas charges for q1 (108.38%), diesel (102.84%), tea lipton (81.29%), petrol (81.17%), rice irri-6/9 (78.75%), rice basmati broken (78.10%), bananas (77.84%), eggs (72.19%), pulse moong (69.44%), wheat flour (56.27%) and bread (55.36%)

The commodities which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a YoY basis included tomatoes (21.87%) and chillies powdered (7.42%).