ISLAMABAD: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) on year-on-year basis during December 2017 witnessed an increase of 4.57 per cent as compared to the same month of previous year.
On month-on-month basis, the inflation witnessed negative growth of 0.10 per cent in December 2017 as compared to November 2017, said Director Prices, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) Attiq-ur-Rehman here at press conference.
The CPI inflation during July-December (2017-18) increased 3.75 percent as compared to the first half of the fiscal year 2016-17.
The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) during the month increased by 0.36 percent while the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) witnessed growth of 0.67 percent, he said while providing detail data 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 4.57 per cent in December 2017 as compared to the same month of last year.
Similarly, the CPI for non-perishable food items increased to 2.30 per cent, perishable items by 22.94 per cent, clothing and footwear 3.64 per cent, housing,
water, electricity, gas and other fuels 4.86 per cent, furnishing and household equipment maintenance 3.26 per cent, health 10.92 percent while the CPI for transport increased by4.45 percent.
In addition, the CPI for communication increased by 1.23 per cent, recreation and culture by 0.59 percent, education by 12.40 percent, restaurant and hotel 6.38 percent while the CPI for miscellaneous goods and service increased by 6.50 percent.
On year-on-year basis, the top items which witnessed decrease in prices in December 2017 included clothing and foot wear, the prices of which decreased by 18.10 percent compared to December 2016.
Meanwhile, the items that witnessed increase in prices during December 2017 compared to December 2016 included, onions (130.35 percent), tomatoes (29.35 percent), government university fee (37.72 percent), government engineering college fee (32.47 percent), government college fee (23.90 percent), potatoes (21.72 percent), chicken (21.21 percent), gas cylinder (17.04 percent), petrol (14.94 percent), iron bar (14.16 percent), diesel (12.80 percent) and kerosene oil (13.51 percent).
The items that witnessed decrease in prices during the month under review included garlic (45.46 percent), gram pulse (28.85 percent), mash pulse (27.41 percent), gram whole (21.71 percent), moong pulse (21.19 percent), masoor pulse (20.77 percent), besan (20.25 percent), sugar (13.45 percent) cement (1.28 percent) and wheat (1.16 percent).
Meanwhile, the trimmed core inflation during the month of December 2017 increased 4.7 percent per cent compared to December 2016 while the non-food and non-energy core inflation increased 5.5 percent in December 2017 compared to December 2016.
