Key Takeaways
- The Sensitive Price Index (SPI) for the week ending October 16, 2026, recorded a 0.04 percent reduction.
- Prices of tomatoes, onions, and bananas fell by 23.05 percent, 4.90 percent, and 2.59 percent, respectively.
- Petrol, rice basmati broken, sugar, and gur saw decreases of 0.70 percent, 0.65 percent, 0.62 percent, and 0.36 percent, respectively.
The Sensitive Price Index (SPI) for the week ending October 16, 2026, recorded a slight reduction of 0.04 percent, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
This reduction was primarily driven by a 23.05 percent decrease in the price of tomatoes, a 4.90 percent drop in onions, and a 2.59 percent decline in bananas.
Other items that experienced a reduction included petrol, which fell by 0.70 percent, rice basmati broken by 0.65 percent, sugar by 0.62 percent, and gur by 0.36 percent.
However, the prices of certain items increased, such as pulse gram, which rose by 4.97 percent, and wheat flour, which saw a 3.36 percent increase.
Chicken and eggs also saw price hikes, with increases of 3.31 percent and 0.99 percent, respectively.
The SPI data also showed that the prices of pulse mash, pulse masoor, firewood, shirting, cooked daal, diesel, LPG, and prepared tea increased by 0.98 percent, 0.95 percent, 0.69 percent, 0.58 percent, 0.55 percent, 0.47 percent, 0.42 percent, and 0.28 percent, respectively.
Of the 51 items in the SPI basket, the prices of 23 items, which constitute 45.10 percent of the basket, recorded an increase; the prices of 7 items, or 13.72 percent of the basket, recorded a reduction; and the prices of 21 items, or 41.18 percent of the basket, remained stable.
On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the SPI trend depicted an increase of 11.38 percent, mainly driven by sharp escalations in the prices of onions, LPG, electricity, petrol, diesel, wheat flour, chili powder, mutton, beef, chicken, bread plain, and prepared tea.
Conversely, the prices of tomatoes, potatoes, sugar, eggs, salt powder, pulse masoor, gur, and pulse moong decreased by 63.65 percent, 39.93 percent, 23.20 percent, 19.83 percent, 14.86 percent, 8.97 percent, 8.92 percent, and 8.92 percent, respectively.
