KARACHI: The prices of essential items has increased by 17.15 percent for higher income group above Rs35,000, according to weekly Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) issued by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
The PBS said that the inflation of the income group above Rs35,000 was increased by 17.15 percent by week ended April 25, 2019 as compared with same week a year ago.
The PBS computes the weekly SPI with base 2007-08=100 covering 17 urban centres and 53 essential items for all income groups/quintiles and combined.
The PBS calculates SPI for income groups included Rs8,000; between Rs8,001 – Rs12,000; Rs12,001-Rs18,000; Rs18,001-Rs35,000; and above Rs35,000. The average inflation for all income group increased by 12.91 percent by week ended April 25, 2018 as compared with corresponding week last year. However, the average inflation increased by 0.37 percent over the previous week ended Aril 18, 2019.
During the week under review as compared with previous week, around 20 items registered increase in their prices. Some of these items are included: tomatoes, onions, potatoes, egg hen, bananas, pulse moong, sugar, pulse mash, garlic, pulse gram, tea prepared, mutton etc.
However, 10 items registered decline in their prices during the week, which included: chicken farm, LPG cylinder 11-kg, wheat, wheat flour, firewood, red chillie, cooking oil, vegetable ghee etc.
Average prices of 22 items remained unchanged during the week under review.
According to PBS the SPI was increasing for the last four consecutive weeks. The SPI is major component for headline inflation i.e. Consumer Price Index (CPI). The movement of SPI sets the monthly CPI.
