ISLAMABAD: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) on year-on-year basis during January 2018 witnessed an increase of 4.42 per cent as compared to the same month of previous year.
On month-on-month basis, the inflation witnessed negative growth of 0.03 per cent in January 2018 as compared to December 2017, said Director Prices, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) Attiq-ur-Rehman here at press conference on Thursday.
The average inflation rate during July-January (2017-18) increased by 3.85 percent as compared to first seven months of last fiscal year.
The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) during the month increased by 1.81. per cent while the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) decreased by 1.04 percent, he said while providing details to the media persons.
It is pertinent to mention that PBS collects the retail and the wholesale prices and computes the CPI and WPI on monthly basis while the SPI is calculated on weekly basis.
As per the data about the CPI of group of commodities, the CPI for food and non-alcoholic beverages on year-on-year basis increased by 5.10 per cent in January2018 as compared to the same month of last year.
Similarly, the CPI for non-perishable food items increased by 2.85 per cent, perishable items by 20.4 per cent, clothing and footwear 4.3 per cent, housing,
water, electricity, gas and other fuels 4.17 per cent, furnishing and household equipment maintenance 4.04 per cent, health 4.04 percent while the CPI for transport increased by 5.68 percent.
In addition, the CPI for communication increased by 1.26 per cent, recreation and culture by 0.88 percent, education by 12.40 percent, restaurant and hotel 6.69 percent while the CPI for miscellaneous goods and service increased by 7.17 percent.
On year-on-year basis, the top items witnessed increase in prices during January 2018 compared to January 2017 included, onions (107.18 percent), tomatoes (56.17 percent), government university fee (37.72 percent), government engineering college fee (32.47 percent), potatoes (29.32 percent), petrol (19.83 percent), Diesel (16.43 percent), Bus fare (14.18 percent), and gas cylinder (21.23 per cent).
The items that witnessed decrease in prices during the month under review included garlic (43.17 percent), cigarettes (29.54 percent), pulse gram (27 perecent), gram flour (19.76 percent), sugar (16.97 percent), eggs (5.67 percent), cement (3.01 percent), and wheat flour (1.17 percent).
Meanwhile, the trimmed core inflation during the month of January 2018 increased by4.6 percent compared to January 2017 while the non-food and non-energy core inflation increased 5.2 percent in January 2018 compared to January 2017.
