According to statistics provided by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), which measures weekly inflation, showed a year-over-year increase of 30.66% for the combined income group for the period ending Dec. 8. Rising food costs mostly drove this increase.
On a week-to-week basis, the SPI remained constant. The major cause of this was the unchanged price of oil, while the prices of a few vegetables showed a little reduction.
Onions typically cost between Rs200 and Rs250 per kg, while the average price of tomatoes in the market is between Rs160 and Rs200 per kg. The cost of potatoes varies from Rs90 to Rs110 per kilograms. The food products with the largest price increases week over week were onions (8.74%), bananas (2.36%), broken basmati rice (2.22%), eggs (1.98%), salt powder (1.33%), and sugar (1.17pc). LPG prices climbed (2.47%) and matchbox prices increased in the non-food category (1.95pc).
The costs of tomatoes (down 25.48%), chicken (3.70%), potatoes (3.68%), pulse masoor (0.38%), cooking oil (5 litres), 2.5 kg (0.32%), pulse gramme (0.30%), and 1 kg of vegetable ghee are all significantly down (0.28pc).
Onions (422.57 percent), diesel (64.57 percent), Lipton tea (62.61 percent), powdered salt (57.35 percent), eggs (55.28 percent), petrol (53.85 percent), men’s sock chappal (52.21 percent), bananas (50.58 percent), tomatoes (49.04 percent), pulse gramme (48.06 percent), pulse moong (45.44 percent), mustard oil (42.96 percent), and pulse mash (39.98 percent).
According to Fahad Rauf, head of research at Ismail Iqbal Securities, the SPI remained steady, since the impact of rising onion prices was offset by a substantial decline in tomato prices (down 25% WoW) (up 8.8 percent WoW). Most of the post-flood gains for tomatoes have been lost.
“Major reason behind fall in tomato prices is the arrival of new crop from Sindh. On the other hand, onion prices have remained on the high side owning to increase in duty on onion exports by the Afghanistan government,” he noted. “We expect perishable prices to decline further in December 2022 due to seasonality. We estimate December 2022 CPI (consumer price index) at 24.1 percent vs 23.8 percent in November 2022.”