Prices of chicken, tomatoes, onions, pulses, other food items go down

F.P. Report

ISLAMABAD: The prices of various food items went down considerably during the week ending on September 16, as compared to the previous week, the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) Friday revealed.
According to the data, the good commodities that witnessed decrease in prices on Week-on-Week basis (WoW) included tomatoes (18.59%), onions (7.22%), bananas (4.92%), potatoes (3.90%), pulse Moong (2.24%), garlic (1.53%), pulse Gram (1.20%), rice Irri (1.05%), pulse Mash (0.85%) and pulse Masoor (0.03%).
On Year-on-Year (YoY) basis, the commodities that witnessed decrease in prices during the week included tomatoes (40.51%), potatoes (29.03%) and pulse Moong (27.24%).
On the other hand, the items that witnessed increase in prices on WoW basis included electricity charges for Q1 (7.23%), diesel (4.37%), petrol (4.19%), chicken (3.40%), eggs (3.10%), LPG (2.58%), washing soap (2.43%), tea Lipton (1.73%), cooking oil 5 litre (1.43%), georgette (1.35%) and sugar (1.23%) with joint impact of (1.68%) into the overall SPI for combined group of (1.31%)
On YoY basis, the food items that witnessed increase in prices included electricity for Q1 (57.14%), LPG (51.06%), vegetable ghee 1 Kg (40.15), vegetable Ghee 2.5 Kg (38.14%), cooking oil 5 liter (38.03%), mustard oil (37.59%), chicken (36.52%), Ccilies powder (35.71%), gents sandal (33.37%), eggs (27.60%) and gents sponge chappal (25.13%).
It is pertinent to mention here that the overall SPI based weekly inflation for the week ended on September 16 witnessed an increase of 1.31 per cent as compared to the previous week.
The weekly SPI with base year 2015-16=100 is covering 17 urban centers and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups.
During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 22 (43.14%) items increased 10 (19.61%) items decreased and 19 (37.25%) items remained constant.