Prices of essential food items skyrocket with advent of Ramazan

12 essential commodities including eggs, potatoes, sugar witnessed decline in prices, according to PBS

ISLAMABAD: The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based inflation in the country registered an increase of  0.62% for the last week that ended on April 23, just days before the advent of holy month of Ramazan, according to a data released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) on Friday.

However, inflation rose to 7.90% on a year-over-year basis last week.

During the last seven days, the prices of 14 essential commodities including potatoes, onions, garlic, chicken, brown sugar, mustard oil, mutton, beef, rice and fresh milk surged in the country.

Whereas, prices of 12 essential commodities including LPG, eggs, potatoes, sugar, pulses like mash, mong and chana, ghee and flour have declined, while prices of 25 other commodities remained stable.

According to statistics, the commodities which witnessed decline included: tomatoes (8.68%), and sugar (0.01%) and dal mong (0.56%), dal mash (0.58%) and dal chana (2.90%).



However, prices of 25 essential commodities remained stable.

According to the data, the rate of inflation remained 8.58 per cent for low income group who earn up to Rs17,732 per month on an annual basis in terms of SPI during the last week.

Whereas those whose earning ranging from Rs17,733 to Rs22,888 per month witnessed inflation rate of 7.85 per cent.

Similarly, 10.99 per cent inflation for those earning ranging from Rs22,889 to Rs29,517 per month and 10.13 per cent for those earning ranging from Rs29,518 to Rs44,175 per month.

While, for people who earn over Rs44,176 a month, the inflation rate remained 7.12 per cent.