Weekly inflation declines despite rise in prices of 11 essential items

ISLAMABAD: The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the week ending on March 20, 2025, has shown a 1.20 per cent decrease on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, while recording a 0.35 per cent drop compared to the previous week. This indicates a slight easing in inflation.

The weekly decline was mainly due to falling prices of key food items such as tomatoes, onions, garlic, eggs, and potatoes. On the other hand, there was a rise in the prices of some non-food products like printed lawn fabric, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and bananas.

Out of 51 items monitored, 22 remained unchanged, 18 saw a reduction in price, and 11 registered an increase, reflecting a mixed trend in inflation.

Among the food items, significant price drops were noted for tomatoes (-7.08 per cent), onions (-6.07 per cent), garlic (-5.59 per cent), eggs (-4.64 per cent), and potatoes (-2.50 per cent). Other items such as pulse gram, tea, sugar, and firewood also saw modest declines.

Meanwhile, certain products experienced price increases, including printed lawn fabric (+2.90 per cent), LPG (+1.53 per cent), bananas (+1.45 per cent), long cloth (+1.23 per cent), bread (+0.55 per cent), cigarettes (+0.27 per cent), beef (+0.25 per cent), curd (+0.24 per cent), and salt powder (+0.03 per cent).

On a yearly basis, the SPI saw notable declines in several items, including onions (-67.67 per cent), wheat flour (-35.58 per cent), tomatoes (-29.45 per cent), and electricity charges (-18.92 per cent). However, some items have seen sharp price increases, such as ladies’ sandals (+75.09 per cent), pulse moong (+26.96 per cent), powdered milk (+25.75 per cent), beef (+21.01 per cent), and chicken (+18.23 per cent).

The data reflects a mixed picture of inflation, with food prices generally trending downward, but some household and non-food items seeing price hikes.

Read next: Weekly inflation up as essential items become pricier