LAHORE: Weekly inflation in Pakistan rose by 0.65 per cent, driven by increases in petrol and a sharp jump in onion prices, according to the Sensitive Price Indicator released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
The bureau recorded the overall year-on-year rate at 8.35 per cent.
Onions were the dominant contributor, rising 26.30 per cent over the week. Tomatoes rose 2.55 per cent and potatoes 0.96 per cent.
On the fuel side, petrol rose 0.90 per cent and diesel 0.09 per cent. The bureau’s report links those increases to further movement in wheat flour, chicken and mash dal prices.
Seven items became cheaper over the week while 27 held steady. Bananas fell 2.54 per cent and moong dal 0.69 per cent, with sugar, eggs, gram dal and gur also recording declines.
The Sensitive Price Indicator is a weekly index of essential consumption items collected from markets across the country, published every Thursday and reported by income group as well as in aggregate.
It differs from the Consumer Price Index in scope and purpose. The CPI is monthly, covers a far broader basket including rent, education, healthcare and transport services, and is the figure used for policy benchmarks. The SPI tracks a narrow set of frequently purchased essentials — food staples, fuel and utilities — and is designed to register short-term movement quickly.
That difference explains why the two can diverge, and why the SPI is the more sensitive gauge of what a household notices between one week’s shopping and the next. It is also why a single week’s reading should not be treated as a trend.
A 26 per cent weekly jump in a single vegetable is not unusual in Pakistan’s produce markets, and it is rarely about consumption.
Onions are grown in seasonal cycles with limited cold-storage capacity nationally, which means supply arrives in waves rather than steadily. In the gap between the exhaustion of one crop’s stored volume and the arrival of the next, prices climb sharply and then fall back just as quickly. Export demand, transport disruption and speculative holding at the wholesale stage can each amplify the swing.
Vegetable spikes of this kind typically unwind within weeks. The fuel component behaves differently — a petrol increase does not reverse on its own, and it passes into the price of everything that has to be moved.
The bureau’s own framing links the petrol and diesel rises to increases in flour, chicken and mash dal. That transmission is the more consequential part of this week’s data.
Fuel enters the cost of food twice: in the transport of produce from farm to market, and in the running of processing, milling and cold-chain operations. It reaches consumers with a lag of one to three weeks and, unlike a vegetable spike, it does not correct when the season turns.
The headline year-on-year rate of 8.35 per cent sits well below the peaks Pakistan recorded during the 2022–23 inflationary period, when weekly SPI readings ran in the high twenties and at points above 40 per cent for the lowest income quintile.
The moderation is real, but the SPI’s construction means the year-on-year figure is measured against a base that was already elevated. For households, disinflation describes the rate of increase slowing — not prices returning to earlier levels.
The next weekly reading is due on Thursday.
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