Essential items’ prices inflate for three consecutive weeks in April

Essential items’ prices inflate for three consecutive weeks in April

ISLAMABAD: The prices of essential items have shown increase for the third consecutive week in the current month indicating the high headline inflation for April 2019.


The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) is showing consistent increase by 0.81 percent, 0.30 percent and 0.39 percent for the week ended April 04, 11 and 18, respectively, according to data released by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).


The PBS issues weekly SPI with base 2007-08=100 covering 17 urban centres and 53 essential items for all income groups/quintiles and combined are computed.


For the week ended April 18 the SPI inflation increased by 0.39 percent over the last week ended April 11 and increased by 12.42 percent over the corresponding week last year.


During the week average prices of 25 items registered increase, which included: onion, chicken farm, garlic, cooked beef, egg hen, pulses mash etc.
The average prices of 6 items registered decrease during the week, which included: tomatoes, potatoes, wheat, LPG cylinder, wheat etc.


However, average prices of 22 items were remained unchanged.