Short-term inflation, as measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), jumped to 38.42% year-on-year (YoY) for the week ending February 16 due to high food and fuel prices, according to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday.
Last week, the year-over-year change in short-term inflation was found to be 34.83 percent.
The SPI went up 2.89 percent from one week to the next, while it only went up 0.17 percent the week before. Arif Habib Limited says that this is the largest weekly rise since October 27.
Based on a survey of 50 markets in 17 cities across the country, the SPI keeps track of the prices of 51 essential items. During the week in question, the prices of 34 things went up, five went down, and 12 stayed the same.
Onions had the biggest increase from last year to this year, 433.44 percent.
Chicken: 101.86pc Diesel: 81.36pc
Eggs: 81.22pc
Rice (Irri-6/9): 74.12pc
Most from last year
Tomatoes: 65.3pc
7.42pc chilli powder
Electricity for the group earning up to Rs17,732 per month: 7.5%
Most WoW rise
8.82 percent; 5 litres of cooking oil: 8.65 percent
Ghee 1 kg: 8.02pc
Chicken: 7.49pc Diesel: 6.49pc
Most WoW drops
Tomatoes: 14.27pc
Eggs: 4.24pc Onions: 13.48pc
Garlic: 2.1pc
Flour: 0.1pc
In Pakistan, prices have been rising at a rate that hasn’t been seen in decades. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed that annual inflation jumped by 27.55 percent in January. This was the biggest jump in inflation since May 1975.
Part of the reason for inflation is that last year’s devastating floods destroyed a lot of farmland, making some food items hard to find. Separately, importers have had trouble getting banks to open letters of credit (LCs) because the country’s foreign exchange reserves have dropped to a dangerously low level. In recent weeks, this also caused the prices of things like flour and pulses to go up.
In the coming months, inflation is likely to go up even more as the government follows the terms it agreed to with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout, such as raising the prices of electricity and gas.
A senior economist at Moody’s Analytics recently said that headline inflation could average 33% in the first half of the current fiscal year before going down.
High inflation could keep low-income households under a lot of stress because they spend a lot more on necessities than they do on extras.
The economist said, “Food prices are high, and they can’t avoid paying for that, so we’ll also see higher poverty rates.”
