Consumer prices witnessed an increase in the outgoing week on the back of wheat flour, gas, diesel, eggs, onion, rice, cigarettes and bananas, taking the weekly inflation to 44.49% on an annual basis, the official data showed on Friday.

The short-term inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), for the current week ended on April 6, 2023 recorded an increase of 0.92%, said Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) in its report.

A major increase was observed in the prices of food items, including chicken (15.87%), sugar (13.48%), potatoes (5.11%), bananas (4.95%), wheat flour (3.10%), gur (2.12%), eggs (1.26%), milk fresh (1.24%) and non-food item, long cloth (1.95%).

On the other hand, decrease was observed in the prices of tomatoes (14.96%), onions (12.66%), LPG (3.73%), pulse gram (1.20%), vegetable ghee 2.5 Kg (0.71%), garlic (0.16%) and mustard oil (0.03%).

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 27 (52.94%) items increased, 07 (13.73%) items decreased and 17 (33.33%) items remained stable.

The year-on-year trend depicted an increase of 44.49%. The increase was witnessed in prices of cigarettes (165.88%), wheat flour (131.72%), gas charges for Q1 (108.38%), diesel (102.84%), eggs (98.34%), tea Lipton (97.63%), rice basmati broken (84.92%), bananas (82.23%), petrol (81.17%), rice irri-6/9 (80.61%), pulse moong (68.14%), potatoes (65.95%), pulse mash (56.70%) and onions (55.75%).

However, the prices of tomatoes (50.39%) and chillies powdered (6.48%) were declined in the outgoing week.