Flour hits Rs2,500 per 20kg in Karachi

Price of commodity in city stood at Rs2,400 last week

KARACHI:

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has revealed that the price of a 20-kilogramme bag of flour in Karachi had jumped to a new peak of Rs2,500 -- the highest in the entire country.

Last week, the price of flour in the city stood at Rs2,400 per 20-kg bag.

This is for the first time in the country's history that flour price has surged to Rs2,500 per 20-kg bag.

According to the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) for the week that ended on December 22, one kilogramme of flour in Karachi now costs Rs125, which is almost double its price in the federal capital and Punjab.

A weekly comparison shows that the 20-kg flour bag price in Karachi, Hyderabad and Quetta has witnessed a surge of Rs100, increasing the rates to Rs2,500, Rs2,420 and Rs2,320, respectively.

In Bannu, Peshawar, Larkana, and Sukkur, the flour prices increased by Rs70, Rs50, Rs40, and Rs40, respectively.

The price of a 20-kg bag of flour in Islamabad and Punjab has been witnessed at Rs1,295.

However, the SPI witnessed a decrease of 0.11% for the combined consumption group during the week under review.

The SPI in the combined consumption group was recorded at 217.39 points against 217.64 points during the past week, according to the PBS data.

In comparison with the corresponding week of last year, the SPI for the combined consumption group witnessed an increase of 28.76%.

The weekly SPI with base year 2015-16 =100 is covering 17 urban centres and 51 essential items for all expenditure groups.

The SPI for the lowest consumption group -- up to Rs17,732 -- witnessed a decrease of 0.04% and went down to 225.59 points from last week’s 225.69 points.

The SPI for the consumption group from Rs17,732 to Rs22,888 witnessed a decrease of 0.01%.

Also read: Weekly inflation hits 30.16% as costs of essential items soar

It slightly increased by 0.02% for the consumption group from Rs22,889 to Rs29,517.

The SPI remained unchanged for the consumption group from Rs29,518 to Rs44,175.

It declined by 0.21% for the consumption group above Rs 44,175.

Of the 51 items, the prices of 20 (39.22%) of them increased, 14 (27.45%) decreased and 17 (33.33%) remained stable during the week under review.

The items which recorded a decrease in their average prices on a week-on-week basis included tomatoes (23.85%), potatoes (10.53%), eggs (1.54%), sugar (1.04%), bananas (0.80%), vegetable ghee 1 kg (0.53), onions (0.39%), garlic (0.35%), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.22%), petrol (4.45%), diesel (3.20%) and liquefied petroleum gas (0.23%).

The commodities which recorded an increase in their average prices on a week-on-week basis included chicken (9.86%), pulse masoor (2.00%), branded tea (1.72%), rice irri-6/9 (1.15%) and wheat flour (1.12%).

On a year-on-year basis, the items that witnessed a decrease in their prices included powdered chillies (37.98%), tomatoes (13.67%), electricity for Q1 (11.81%) and jaggery (2.32%).

The commodities that witnessed an increase in prices on a year-on-year basis included onions (482.30%), chicken (67.42%), branded tea (65.41%), diesel (65.05%), petrol (52.19%), powdered salt (51.99%), bananas (47.95%), pulse moong (47.13%), eggs (47.07%), pulse gram (45.24%) and mustard oil (40.97%).

(With input from APP)