ISLAMABAD: Short-term inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), increased 3.87 per cent year-on-year in the week ending Jan 15 due to an increase in the retail price of tomatoes and LPG cylinders.

The SPI-based inflation recorded an upward trend over the past 24 consecutive weeks, mainly driven by surges in the prices of perishable products, wheat flour, and pulses. It, however, increased by 0.25pc from the previous week due to a consistent increase in non-perishable food items, official data showed on Friday.

The items whose prices increased the most over the previous week inclu­ded tomatoes (27.64pc), LPG (7.03pc), wheat flour (3.26pc), eggs (2.19pc), bananas (1.68pc), chilli powder (1.02pc), firewood (0.80pc), pulse moong (0.70pc), georgette (0.69pc), mustard oil (0.67pc) and powdered milk (0.36pc).

The items whose prices declined week-on-week included potatoes (6.72pc), onions (3.82pc), chicken (1.66pc), salt powder (0.67pc), pulse gram (0.58pc), rice basmati broken (0.44pc), vegetable ghee 1kg (0.31pc) and pulse masoor (0.29pc).

However, on an annual basis, the items whose prices increased the most included wheat flour (34.90pc), gas charges for Q1 (29.85pc), eggs (20.85pc), beef (12.83pc), chilies powder (12.56pc), sugar (10.43pc), firewood (10.35pc), gur (9.97pc), powdered milk (9.90pc), bananas (8.92pc), lawn printed (8.29pc) and shirting (7.93pc).

In contrast, the prices of potatoes dropped 46.60pc, followed by onions (37.30pc), garlic (35.91pc), tomatoes (32.88pc), pulse gram (31.03pc), tea Lipton (17.79pc), pulse mash (13.69pc), pulse masoor (9.55pc), diesel (1.27pc) and petrol (0.95pc).