Sugar, flour drive increase despite falling vegetable prices; weekly SPI edges up 0.24%<\/p>\n
KARACHI: <\/p>\n
Pakistan’s weekly inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), recorded a year-on-year (YoY) increase of 3.75% for the week ended December 18, 2025, according to the latest report released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).<\/p>\n
The SPI, which tracks price movements of 51 essential commodities across 50 markets in 17 cities, provides a snapshot of short-term inflationary pressures affecting households nationwide.<\/p>\n
On a week-on-week (WoW) basis, the SPI rose by a modest 0.24%, reflecting mixed trends in essential goods. Significant upward pressure came from food items, with chicken prices surging 11.11%, powdered chilli climbing 3.08%, and eggs increasing 2.88%.<\/p>\n
Other notable increases were observed in shirting (1.64%), firewood (0.86%), cooking oil (0.32%), and energy savers (0.31%). These price rises were partially offset by sharp declines in several key commodities: tomatoes fell 11.38%, potatoes dropped 8.39%, sugar declined 4.52%, onions eased 3.52% and high-speed diesel decreased 5%.<\/p>\n
Out of the 51 items monitored, prices of 17 items rose, 14 decreased, and 20 remained unchanged.<\/p>\n
The YoY comparison reveals persistent inflationary pressures in certain essentials. Gas charges for the first quarter soared 29.85%, followed by sugar (24.10%), wheat flour (22.52%), chicken (20.78%), beef (13.66%), gur (13.43%), and firewood (12.08%).<\/p>\n
In contrast, substantial relief was observed in vegetable prices, with tomatoes plummeting 66.49%, potatoes down 45.31%, garlic falling 39.10%, onions declining 29.77%, and pulse gram dropping 28.95%. Lipton tea prices eased significantly by 17.79%.<\/p>\n
The inflation impact varied across income groups. The highest weekly increase of 0.28% was recorded in the top expenditure quintile (households spending above Rs44,175 per month), while the lowest quintile saw only a 0.07% rise.<\/p>\n
Year-on-year, the middle-income group (Q3) faced the steepest inflation at 3.79%, compared to 2.39% for the poorest quintile.<\/p>\n
The combined SPI index stood at 336.53 points, up from 335.73 in the previous week. Data shows that while weekly inflation remains contained, elevated YoY energy-related charges and staple food prices continue to strain household budgets, particularly for middle and lower middle-income families.<\/p>\n
Seasonal declines in perishable items such as vegetables and recent adjustments in fuel prices have provided some respite, helping keep overall short-term inflation moderate as the year draws to a close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sugar, flour drive increase despite falling vegetable prices; weekly SPI edges up 0.24% KARACHI: Pakistan’s weekly inflation, measured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,9041],"class_list":{"0":"post-359683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-latest"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}