The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) year-on-year of 53 daily use items for week ending on March 2, 2006 has shown 7.48 percent increase as compared to the corresponding week of last year. The significant feature of the weekly bulletin of Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) was that year-on-year the rise in the prices of some necessities and kitchen items had been exorbitant.
These items were sugar, tomatoes, potatoes, diesel, petrol, kerosene oil, firewood, gur, and all kind of pulses, which hit the low-income group.
The bulletin on SPI, based on data collected for about 53 items from 17 centres, showed that 14 items registered increase, and 10 items showed decline, while prices of 29 items remained unchanged.
However, further analysis of the data showed that year-on-year basis, eight items are dearer by double digits. These include moong pulse by 46 percent, potatoes 44 percent, mash pulse 32 percent, firewood 24 percent, tomatoes 16 percent, beef 13 percent, fresh milk 12 percent and curd increased by 11 percent.
Among these items, in a short span of one week, the prices of tomatoes increased by 31.6 percent, potatoes 1.74 percent, Bananas 1.64 percent and moong pulse increased by 1.01 percent over previous week.
The FBS figures further showed that though the prices of 29 items posted no change during the week, compared to the corresponding week of last year, several items are now costlier. For example, diesel is dearer by 32 percent, petrol 28 percent, match box 22 percent, ladies' sandal (Bata) 20 percent, kerosene 17 percent, tea prepared 17 percent and salt (powdered) by 12 percent.
The bulletin further indicates that though the prices of 10 items decreased, compared to the prices of corresponding week of last year, items, which showed increase in their prices were gur, which is dearer by 36 percent, and sugar 33 percent.
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