Pakistan’s weekly Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) fell 0.77% week-on-week for the period ending January 23, 2025, marking its fourth consecutive decline.
The decline was largely driven by significant price drops for essential items, including tomatoes (-33%), eggs (-10%), onions (-10%) and potatoes (-7%).
According to Topline Research, the SPI recorded a modest increase of 0.5%, the lowest in almost seven years, indicating cooling inflationary pressures, according to Topline research.
“The SPI reading is the lowest since the data is available,” commented AHL director Tahir Abbas research.
According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), a significant week-on-week decline was observed in the prices of tomatoes (-32.99%), eggs (-10.23%), onions (-9.79%), potatoes (- 7.37% ), Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG, -2.70%), Pulse Gram (-1.61%), Chicken (-1%), Pulse Mash (-0.76%) and Gur (-0.50%).
On the other hand, prices of several items recorded an increase, including sugar (2.93%), bananas (2.70%), garlic (0.60%), broken basmati rice (0.47%), one kg vegetable ghee (0.33%), moong pulse (0.25%), cooked daal (0.21%), IRI-6/9 rice (0.15%) and firewood (0.13%).
On a year-over-year basis, the SPI showed an overall increase of 0.52%. Notable price increases were observed in ladies sandals (75.09%), potatoes (44.30%), pulse gram (37.98%), Moong pulse (32.67%), milk powder (25.89%), beef (22.37 %), one kgg Vegetable Ghee (16.87%), garlic (16.28%), Q1 gas charges (15.52%), trashing (14.83%), 2.5 kg of vegetable ghee (14.54%) and firewood (0.13%). Meanwhile, significant price reductions were recorded for onions (-51.59%), eggs (-39.15%), tomatoes (-37.43%), wheat flour (-36.29%), chili powder (-20%), charges of electricity Q1 (–electricity loads (– 18.11%), Pulse Masoor (-11.01%), pulse mash (-10.27%), broken basmati rice (-8.56%), diesel (-5.47%), LPG (-1.79%) and gasoline (-1.18%).
The deputy head of research at JS Global said the ongoing sharp disinflationary trend was expected to persist, with the January consumer price index (CPI) likely to fall to 2.8%, the lowest since November 2015. due to a high base effect, despite a month of 0.6%- in the month of each month. This will take the 7MFY25 average inflation to 6.7%, below the 7MFY24 average of 28.7%.
