Pakistan's short-term inflation rises 27.5%

Pakistan's short-term inflation has risen 27.57 per cent on a year-on-year basis for the week ending on August 17 largely due to a surge in petroleum prices, showed the official data released on Friday, Dawn reported.Dawn is a Pakistani English-language newspaper.The inflation, however, decelerated from the preceding week's 30.82 per cent.

On a week-on-week basis, the weekly inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), rose 0.78 per cent, showing a rising trend for the past four consecutive weeks.The petrol price was raised by 6.40 per cent and diesel by 7.29 per cent.Of the 51 items in the SPI basket, prices of 32 goods soared, seven dropped and 12 remained unchanged compared to the previous week.

According to Dawn, during the week under review, the items whose prices increased the most over the same week a year ago were: wheat flour (131.29 per cent), gas charges for Q1 (108.38 per cent), cigarettes (106.89 per cent), tea Lipton (95.19 per cent), rice basmati broken (88.76 per cent), chillies powder (86.05 per cent), rice Irri-6/9 (84.16 per cent), sugar (74.71 per cent), gur (63 per cent), chicken (58.56 per cent), gents sponge chappal (58.05 per cent), potatoes (56.30 per cent) and salt powdered (49.09 per cent).The biggest rise week-on-week was in the price of chillies powder (7.58 per cent), rice Irri-6/9 (7.48 per cent), garlic (5.06 per cent), sugar (4.02 per cent), gur (3.23 per cent), rice basmati broken (3.06 per cent), chicken (2.83 per cent) and bananas (2.72 per cent).

The SPI in May stayed above 45 per cent for three weeks after hitting an all-time high at 48.35 per cent on May 4.The rupee depreciation, rising petrol prices, sales tax and electricity bills are among the key contributors to this inflationary trend.

According to the latest IMF forecast, the average Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the current fiscal year is projected to be 25.9 per cent from the previous year's 29.6 per cent, as per Dawn.

A decrease was also observed on a week-on-week basis in prices of tomatoes (13.60 per cent), cooking oil 5 litres (1.65 per cent), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.85 per cent), vegetable ghee 1 kg (0.43 per cent), firewood (0.42 per cent), mustard oil (0.23 per cent) and wheat flour (0.19 per cent).