Sky-high inflation further decimates masses’ purchasing power

F.P. Report

KARACHI: The record high inflation continued to add miseries to the poverty-stricken people during the week ending on April 27 and further decimated people’s purchasing power.

The weekly inflation rose by 46.82 percent year-on-year and 0.15 percent week-on-week during the seven-day period ending on April 27, reported Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in its weekly bulletin.

The national data collecting agency attributed the increase in the sensitive price indicator (SPI) to the rise in prices of potatoes (8.22pc), chicken (1.75pc), wheat flour (1.55pc), gur (1.23pc), bread (1.13pc), and rice irri-6/9 (1.01pc).

However, the items which witnessed a decrease in prices during the last week were tomatoes (19.20pc), Bananas (5.39pc), Onions (1.40pc), Sugar (1.19pc), LPG (1.09pc), Pulse masoor (0.98pc) and Mustard oil with a decrease of 0.39 percent.

For the week under review, SPI was recorded at 252.20 points against 251.83 points registered last week and 171.78 points recorded during the week ended on April 28, 2022. Fahad Rauf, head of research at Ismail Iqbal Securities said that SPI went up moderately mainly because of an increase in the prices of potatoes and mutton.

The price trend of perishable food items during the Eid week has been mixed, with prices of potatoes, chicken, and mutton went up and prices of tomatoes, bananas, and onions went down.

Commodities with the highest weights for the lowest quintile include Milk (17.5449pc), Electricity (8.3627pc), wheat flour (6.1372pc), sugar (5.1148pc), firewood (5.0183pc), long cloth (4.2221pc) and vegetable ghee with weightage of 3.2833pc.

Of these commodities, the price of milk and wheat flour increased; sugar decreased; whereas prices of electricity, firewood, long cloth and vegetable ghee remained unchanged. However, the prices of all these commodities went up on a yearly basis.