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- Annual inflation rate fell to 0.3% in April, well below the finance ministry鈥檚 estimate of 1.5-2%
- The Pakistan Stock Exchange also recorded a 7.5% gain in May on a month-on-month basis
ISLAMABAD: Short-term inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), lowered by 0.81% in Pakistan, the country鈥檚 statistics bureau said this week, as prices of most essential items remained stable.
The SPI, which comprises 51 essential items collected from 50 markets in 17 cities, is computed on a weekly basis to assess the price movement of essential commodities at a shorter interval of time to review the price situation in the country.
While the SPI for the week ending on May 29 decreased 0.81% on a week-on-week basis, it recorded an increase of 0.41% when compared to the same week last year, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
鈥淒uring the week, out of 51 items, prices of 14 (27.45%) items increased, 10 (19.61%) items decreased and 27 (52.94%) items remained stable,鈥� the PBS said.
A decrease was observed in the prices of electricity charges for Q1 (10.10%), chicken (8.51%), LPG (2.67%), sugar (0.25%), powdered milk (0.20%), vegetable ghee 2.5Kg (0.17%), wheat flour (0.09%), rice (0.07%), garlic (0.05%) and pulse moong (0.01%).
The items whose prices increased during the week included tomatoes (4.54%), potatoes (2.94%), eggs (2.19%), onions (2.17%), gur (0.77%), bananas (0.73%), mustard oil (0.34%), pulse mash (0.22%), pulse gram (0.17%), pulse masoor (0.14%) and basmati rice (0.12%).
Pakistan鈥檚 annual inflation rate fell to 0.3% in April, well below the Ministry of Finance estimate of 1.5% to 2%. The central bank forecasts average inflation to be in the range of 5.5% to 7.5% for the fiscal year ending June.
Also, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) recorded a 7.5% gain in May on a month-on-month basis, according to the Karachi-based Topline Securities.
鈥淭his gain can be attributed to cut in policy rate by 100bps by SBP,鈥� it said in its monthly review, citing improvement in inflation outlook and approval of first review of Pakistan鈥檚 $7 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) program as well as the approval of another $1.4 billion under the IMF鈥檚 Resilience and Sustainability Facility.
鈥淎verage daily traded volume and value during the month stood at 566 million shares and PKR28 billion.鈥�