Weekly Inflation Eases to 11.38% as Tomato Prices Crash, Wheat Flour Keeps Rising

Pakistan's weekly inflation rate eased to 11.38% year-on-year in the week ended October 15, down from 11.97% the week before, as a sharp fall in tomato and onion prices offset continued increases in wheat flour, chicken and pulses, according to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data released on Friday.

The Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), which PBS computes weekly from 51 essential items across 17 cities to track short-term price movement, fell 0.04% over the previous week. The combined index stood at 372.43 points, against 372.58 a week earlier and 334.39 in the corresponding week of 2025. Dawn reported the release the same day.

What pulled the index down

Tomatoes led the week's declines, falling 23.05%, followed by onions (4.90%), bananas (2.59%), petrol (0.70%), broken basmati rice (0.65%), sugar (0.62%) and gur (0.36%). Of the 51 items PBS tracks, seven fell and 21 held steady.

What kept climbing

Twenty-three items, or 45.10% of the basket, rose over the week. Pulse gram led the increases at 4.97%, followed by wheat flour (3.36%), chicken (3.31%), eggs (0.99%), pulse mash (0.98%) and pulse masoor (0.95%). Diesel and LPG also edged up, by 0.47% and 0.42% respectively, even as petrol eased slightly at the pump. The live petrol price page tracks each day's revision under the pricing mechanism OGRA adopted in July.

A year of much steeper swings

The weekly snapshot understates how far some prices have moved since last October. Onions are up 75.19% year-on-year despite their recent fall, LPG has climbed 68.95%, and first-quarter electricity charges are up 58.59%. Petrol and diesel are up 49.60% and 43.98% respectively over the same period, with wheat flour close behind at 35.13% — a run that has continued through the previous week's SPI report, which recorded a 0.57% weekly rise. Tomatoes and potatoes, meanwhile, are down 63.65% and 39.93% from a year ago, a reminder that produce prices move in both directions far more sharply than packaged staples.

A gap between richer and poorer households

PBS breaks the SPI down by five income groups, called quintiles, based on monthly spending. The lowest-spending group — households spending up to Rs17,732 a month — recorded the smallest annual increase, 8.19%, while the highest-spending group, above Rs44,175 a month, saw 12.09%. The gap reflects differences in what each group buys: onions, LPG and electricity, the sharpest year-on-year risers, carry more weight in the basket of higher-spending urban households than in the lowest quintile's.

How this compares with the official inflation rate

The SPI is a weekly snapshot of a narrower basket of essential goods, not Pakistan's headline inflation rate. The Consumer Price Index, PBS's broader monthly measure, stood at 10.3% in September, itself down from 11.1% in August. The SPI has consistently run above the CPI through this stretch, reflecting how heavily weighted it is toward the food and fuel items that have moved the most.

What to watch

PBS publishes the next SPI report on October 23. Whether wheat flour's climb continues, and whether tomato and onion prices hold their sharp fall or rebound as quickly as they dropped, will decide whether the year-on-year rate keeps easing or reverses.

Build Better Pakistan's Economy Desk tracks PBS's weekly inflation data and will update this piece as new figures are released.