Flour, chicken prices push weekly inflation up 1.09%

• Chicken price increasing due to soybean feed shortage.
• Analysts estimate Jan 2023 CPI at 27% vs 24.5% in Dec 2022.
• Price of 20kg wheat flour bag on upward trajectory since Nov 2022.

KARACHI: Surge in the prices of chicken, rice, and wheat flour pushed weekly inflation up 1.09% during the seven-day period that ended January 5 (Thursday).

Annualised inflation hiked by 30.60%, increasing the worries of low and middle-income groups, who might soon lose their spending capacity for even essential commodities, the data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday showed.

The PBS data attributed the WoW increase in sensitive price indicator (SPI) to the rise in the prices of chicken (16.09 %), broken rice basmati (5.16%), wheat flour (4.87%), rice irri-6/9 (3.45%), bananas (2.97%), onions (2.65%), bread (1.24%), salt powdered (1.07%) and pulse moong (1.02%).

On the other hand, the decrease was observed in the prices of potatoes (4.61%), eggs (1.31%), tomatoes (1.17%), LPG (0.85%), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (0.71%), cooking oil 5 litre (0.32%), sugar (0.24%), vegetable ghee 1kg (0.11%) and pulse masoor (0.05%).

Commenting on the weekly data, Ismail Iqbal Securities analyst, Fahad Rauf, said SPI increased mainly due to an increase in chicken and wheat prices.

Chicken price has been increasing due to a shortage of soybean feed, whereas the price of wheat was on the higher side because of the support price disparity between Sindh and Punjab, which also resulted in a shortage of grain at wheat flour mills.

“We estimate January 2023 CPI (consumer price index) at 27% vs 24.5% in December 2022. We have assumed a further Rs100/kg increase in chicken prices,” Rauf noted.

The price of a 20kg wheat flour bag has been on an upwards trajectory since the week-ended November 24, 2022 when it was Rs1,509.83/bag. In the weeks since then 20kg wheat flour price has jumped up by Rs187.79/20kg bag on average to stand at Rs1,697.62/bag.

During the same week last year, the price was Rs1,167.96/20kg bag as per the PBS data. This shows that the average price of a wheat flour bag weighing 20kg has increased by Rs529.66 for consumers.

However, on a year-on-year basis, this shows a 45.35% hike in the price of the essential commodity.

The PBS data attributes different weightages to the commodities in the SPI basket.

For the group with the lowest spending capacity, wheat flour holds a weightage of 6.1372%, whereas for the combined group the weightage stands at 3.9725%.

Other commodities with the highest weights for the lowest quintile include milk (17.5449%), electricity (8.3627%), sugar (5.1148%), firewood (5.0183%), long cloth (4.2221%), and vegetable ghee (3.2833%).

Among these, prices of milk and firewood increased; sugar and vegetable ghee declined, whereas the price of electricity and long cloth remained the same.

For the groups spending up to Rs17,732; Rs17,733-22,888; Rs22,889-29,517; Rs29,518-44,175; and above Rs44,175; YoY SPI increased 29.60, 30.06, 31.88, 32.92, and 30.59%, respectively.

The SPI was recorded at 219.56 points against 217.20 points registered last week and 168.12 points recorded during the week ended January 1, 2022.