Pakistan: Inflation touches 29.8 per cent amid rise in food, energy prices

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Pakistan, pushed its weekly inflation up by 1.30 per cent and annualised inflation up to 29.83 per cent, Geo News reported on Saturday citing The News. According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the increase in the sensitive price indicator (SPI) was attributed to an increase in the prices of tomatoes (16.85 per cent), LPG (9.82 per cent), petrol (7.86 per cent) and diesel (7.82 per cent), chilli powder (7.58 per cent), garlic (5.71 per cent), onion (5.50 per cent), powdered milk (5.17 per cent), eggs (3.86 per cent) and broken basmati rice (2.06 per cent).

On the other hand, a major decrease was observed in the prices of mustard oil (1.63 per cent), chicken (1.40 per cent), vegetable ghee 1kg (0.51 per cent), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (0.36 per cent), pulse gram (0.22 per cent), wheat flour (0.20 per cent) and pulse moong (0.03 per cent). For the week under review, SPI was recorded at 271.56 points against 268.08 points registered last week and 209.17 points recorded during the week ending August 8, 2022.PBS compiles SPI by collecting prices of 51 essential items from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 23 (45.10%) items increased, 7 (13.72%) items decreased and prices of 21 (41.18%) items remained unchanged, Geo News reported. Notably, different weights are assigned to various commodities in the SPI basket.

Commodities with the highest weights for the lowest quintile include milk (17.5449 per cent), electricity (8.3627 per cent), wheat flour (6.1372 per cent), sugar (5.1148 per cent), firewood (5.0183 per cent), long cloth (4.2221 per cent), and vegetable ghee (3.2833 per cent). Out of these commodities, the price of milk, sugar, and firewood went up; wheat flour