The CPI inflation is expected to settle at 9.59 percent in the month of May 2019 as compared to 4.19 percent in the same month of 2018. The CPI inflation was recorded at 8.82 percent in the month of April 2019. The inflation uptick is due to unfavourable exchange rate movement and Ramazan factor, Arsalan Hanif, an analyst at Arif Habib Limited said.
In particular, increase in CPI can be owed to uptick in prices of food related products specially fresh fruits, vegetables, pulses and sugar and increase in price of MoGas by Rs 9.37/litre (increasing CPI by 19bps), he added. It will take 11 months of FY19 average inflation to 7.22 percent, compared to 3.81 percent in the same period last year. "On a yearly basis, increase in inflation is likely to be led by transport (up 16.9 percent), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (up 13.1 percent), food (up 10.0 percent), housing (up 9.8 percent) and health (up 9.2 percent).
On a monthly basis, CPI reading is expected to increase by 1.2 percent attributable to surge in transport index (3.03 percent) and food index (up 2.40 percent), he said. As per two weeks Sensitive Price Index (SPI) data published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), average prices of onions, fresh Fruits, potatoes, vegetable and sugar are expected to register a surge of 23 percent, 19 percent, 16 percent, 7 percent and 3 percent, respectively. On the other hand, decline in prices of essential food items such as tomatoes (down 20 percent) and chicken (down 2.0 percent) is expected to keep the food index restrained, he said.
Comments
Comments are closed.