22 cities hit harder by high prices

ISLAMABAD • The State Bank of Pakistan data has revealed that nine cities of the Punjab, four of North west Frontier Province, six of Sindh and three of Balochistan remained the worst hit by inflation in 2007-08.

These cities faced more than six percent increase lit the aggregate inflation hitting all baskets of consumption while the rest of the country was subjected to more than 5.4 percent hike, the latest SBP data shows.

Income Group-wise Inflation rate examined by the SBP during January 2008 reveals that inflation for various income groups, three out of four income categories have experienced higher than the overall average Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation: general, food and non-food.

The only category that displayed lower inflation than the overall CPI inflation was the income group earning Rs12,000 or above.

The highest Year on Year (YoY) CPI inflation was recorded for the income group of up to Rs3,000 that recorded double-digit inflation for the fourth consecutive month (14.7 per cent), followed by income group of Rs3,001 to

5,000(14.5 per cent) and income group Rs5,001 to 12,000 (13.0 per cent) while the highest income group, with incomes above Rs12,000, experienced the lowest inflation in all categories (10.2 per cent). City-wise data of income groups exhibits that the lowest YoY inflation was recorded in Rawalpindi by the group with income up to Rs3,000 followed by Sialkot (for the group with incomes in the range of Rs3,001 to 5,000, and for the group with income in the range of Rs5,001 to 12,000).

Rawalpindi recorded the lowest inflation for the income groups with earnings of above Rs12,000 per month. The highest YoY inflation was recorded in Bannu for all income groups.

In all, price hike data of 35 most impacted cities was examined, to find that 25 cities were in the category of high-inflation towns. The data exhibited that the highest level of year-to-year inflation was recorded in Bannu.

The inflation in CPI of January 2008 in the following cities showed on the extreme: Bannu, Attock, Bahawalnagar, Sargodha, Nawabshah, Jhelum, Khuzdar, Karachi, Shahdadpur, Bahawalpur, Samundari, Okara, Vehari, Lahore, Loralai, Rawalpindi, Sukkur, Islamabad, Turbat, Sialkot, Hyderabad, Larkana, Mianwali, Dera Ghazi Khan, Mardan, Gujranwala, Abbotabad, Mirpur Khas, Kunri, Dera Ismail Khan, Jhang, Multan Quetta, Faisalabad and Peshawar.