Pakistan’s inflation surges to 32.89% in first week of Ramadan

The weekly inflation slightly rose to 32.89 percent in the first week of the holy month of Ramadan, ending on March 14, primarily fuelled by an increase in fuel and food items rates, official data showed on Saturday.

According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data, the weekly inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), increased by 1.35 percent.

During the week under review, out of the 51 items covered by the SPI basket, the prices of 18 items increased, 10 items decreased and 23 items remained unchanged.

Notable increases were observed in the prices of tomatoes (21.96%), bananas (21.76%), eggs (7.15%), onions (5.6%), LPG (4.45%), garlic (3.6%), mutton (1.7%) beef (1.5%) and chicken (1.4%).

Conversely, prices of cooking oil (-1%), vegetable ghee (-1%), wheat flour (-1%), sugar (-0.64%), jaggery (-0.57%), rice-basmati broken (-0.50%), pulse masoor (-0.17%), and pulse mash (-0.15%) exhibited a decrease.