ISLAMABAD: Short-term inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), increased 3.95 per cent year-onyear in the week ending Sept 25, owing to an increase in the retail price of nonperishable products in the domestic market.

The SPI-based inflation rate recorded an upward trend for the past nine consecutive weeks. The increase is mainly driven by a surge in prices of non-perishable products, including wheat flour, vegetable ghee, cooking oil, mutton, beef, chicken, and fresh milk. It, however, declined by 0.16pc from the previous week, official data showed on Friday.

The prices of onions and potatoes saw a slight decline owing to supply from Afghanistan via Torkham border.

The extraordinary spike in the retail prices of sugar, and meat also contributed in reversing the trend during the past weeks under review.

The retail price of sugar in the market reached to Rs195 to Rs200 per kg.

The overall short-term inflation rate has also slowed due to the higher base of last year. Moreover, the prices remained stable for most of the products, excluding wheat flour and a few perishable products. The price of meat is steadily on the rise in the past few weeks. The weekly inflation hit a record 48.35pc year-on-year in early May 2023, but then decelerated as lowas 24.4pc in late August 2023 before surging past 40pc during the week ending Nov 16, 2023.

The items whose prices increased the most over the previous week included tomatoes (9.04pc), eggs (0.88pc), wheat flour (0.76pc), gur (0.64pc), powdered milk (0.58pc), washing soap (0.47pc), mutton (0.40pc), cooking oil (0.21pc), lawn printed (0.17pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (0.16pc), milk fresh (0.15pc) and curd (0.11pc).

The items whose prices saw a decline week-on-week included chicken (12.46pc), bananas (4.22pc), potatoes (2.44pc), onions (1.61pc), LPG (0.65pc), garlic (0.61pc), pulse moong (0.60pc), pulse gram (0.53pc), pulse mash (0.39pc), pulse masoor (0.14pc) and rice IRRI-6/9 (0.01pc).

However, on an annual basis, the items whose prices increased the most included ladies sandal (55.62pc), tomatoes (53.61pc), sugar (31.90pc), gas charges for Q1 (29.85pc), wheat flour (17.36pc), pulse moong (16.67pc), gur (12.15pc), beef (12.04pc), firewood (11.77pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (11.37pc), vegetable ghee 1 kg (11.09pc), diesel (9.51pc) and cooking oil (9.01pc).

In contrast, the prices of onions dropped 42.39pc, followed by garlic (27.95pc), electricity charges for Q1 (26.26pc), pulse gram (22.65pc), chicken (22.33pc), pulse mash (19.81pc), potatoes (18.04pc), tea Lipton (17.93pc), pulse masoor (4.54pc) andrice Irri-6/9(2.45pc).