Global Rice News

Inflation Rises by 42.6% in Pakistan: Gas Price Shock and Essential Eatables Contribute

In the week ending December 21, the short-term inflation in Pakistan, as measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), increased by 42.6% on an annual basis. This marks the sixth consecutive week where the weekly inflation index has remained above 41%. However, on a week-on-week basis, the SPI decreased by 0.5%.

The SPI is calculated weekly to track the price movement of essential commodities over shorter intervals of time and assess the price situation in the country. It includes 51 essential items collected from 50 markets in 17 cities.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) stated, “The year-on-year trend depicts an increase of 42.60% in SPI.” The PBS attributed this spike to an unprecedented 1,109% increase in gas rates, as well as unavoidable kitchen items like wheat, rice, chillies, tomatoes, and sugar.

During the week ending December 21, the prices of cigarettes increased by 93.22% compared to the previous year, while chilli powder became almost 82% more expensive. Wheat flour prices saw a 78.8% jump, followed by a 72.5% increase in garlic prices. Broken rice basmati prices increased by 62.5%, and rice IRRI-6 and 9 prices increased by 59.45%.

Other notable price increases included gents sponge chappal (58.05%), tomatoes (56.89%), gents sandal (53.37%), sugar (50.33%), and gur (49.86%). On the other hand, prices decreased for onions (23.92%), mustard oil (4.24%), 1 kg vegetable ghee (1.59%), 2.5 kg vegetable ghee (0.62%), and bananas (0.06%) on an annualized basis.

However, in comparison to the previous week that ended on December 14, the SPI for the week ending December 21 slightly decreased by 0.51%. This decrease was observed in the prices of potatoes (13.17%), petrol super (4.97%), diesel (4.68%), tomatoes (3.45%), sugar (1.16%), wheat flour bag (0.33%), chicken (0.13%), rice basmati broken (0.11%), and cooking oil 5-litre (0.07%). Conversely, prices increased for eggs (10.42%), firewood whole (1.23%), onions (1.19%), pulse moong (0.88%), pulse gram (0.79%), garlic and rice IRRI-6/9 (0.40%) each, pulse masoor (0.30%), LPG (0.26%), bananas (0.19%), shirting (0.15%), and georgette (0.13%).

The PBS reported that out of the 51 items, prices of 18 (35.29%) items increased, prices of nine items (17.65%) decreased, and prices of 24 items (47.06%) remained stable during the week under review.

On an annual basis, the SPI inflation reached a record high of 48.35% in early May but then decreased to as low as 24.4% in late August. However, it surged past 40% during the week ending November 16 and has remained above that level since then.

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