Prices of 19 edible items go up: PBS

Islamabad: Prices of at least 19 essential edibles including flour, sugar, potato, tomato, dal mash, rice and jiggery went up in the last one week.

According to a weekly report issued by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), inflation went up by 0.20 per cent and soared to a staggering 34.96 per cent.

According to the PBS, the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) is computed on weekly basis to assess the price of essential commodities. The SPI comprises 51 essential items collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.

The SPI for the week ended on Jun 15 increased by 0.20%, the PBS said. It said that a major increase was observed in the prices of food items including sugar (4.24%), Gur (2.42%), wheat flour (1.79%), curd (1.59%), pulse mash (1.25%), garlic (1.15%), milk fresh (1.08%) and non-food item, washing soap (1.61%).

On the other hand, a slight decrease was observed in the price of onions (7.56%), bananas (5.00%), eggs (4.86%), LPG (4.14%), pulse moong (2.04%), pulse gram (1.46%), wegetable ghee 1 kg (1.36%), chicken (1.12%), mustard oil (0.75%), cooking oil 5 litre (0.44%), pulse masoor (0.42%) and vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.36%).

According to the PBS, during the week, of the 51 items, prices of 19 items (37.25%) increased, 12 (23.53%) items decreased and 20 (39.22%) items remained stable.

The year on year trend depicted an increase of 34.96% as prices of various items went up including cigarettes (124.38%), tea lipton (114.93%), wheat flour (110.08%), gas charges for Q1 (108.38%), rice basmati broken (79.11%), rice irri-6/9 (78.11%), potatoes (67.44%), bananas (67.33%), gents sponge chappal (58.05%), pulse moong (53.41%), bread (52.36%), pulse mash (52.32%) and salt powdered (49.65%), while a decrease was observed in the prices of tomatoes (29.71%), onions (17.94%), diesel (3.89%) and pulse masoor (0.91%).

According to the report, the price of sugar rose by Rs5 per kilogram and a 20-kilogram bag of flour by Rs35.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has secured a commercial loan of $1 billion from China, bolstering its financial resources amid these challenging times.

Furthermore, an agreement has been reached with Azerbaijan, ensuring the supply of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to Pakistan at a discounted rate. This development is expected to alleviate some pressure on the energy sector and contribute to the country’s economic stability.

As the nation grapples with rising inflation and costly essential items, authorities continue to explore measures to provide relief to the citizens.