Pakistan’s weekly inflation measure is the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI), compiled by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). It tracks weekly price movements for a defined basket of essential items—not the full range of household spending—and reports changes from the previous week and from the corresponding week a year earlier.
What Pakistan’s weekly inflation figure measures
PBS describes the SPI as a weekly measure of essential-commodity price movements, intended to show changes at shorter intervals. In the current 2015–16-base series, the basket contains 51 items, with prices collected from 50 markets in 17 cities. The published index uses a base of 2015–16=100. PBS Price Statistics and its Price FAQs give these coverage details.
That defined basket makes the SPI a useful short-term indicator, but it is not a record of every price paid by every household. Its percentage change describes movement in the index; individual families may experience different price changes depending on what they buy and where they shop.
How PBS collects prices
PBS’s Price Statistics Section collects and compiles retail and wholesale prices and computes price indices. For field price collection, PBS says it uses Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI). Its methodology describes collectors visiting selected shops, supervisors checking markets, and headquarters staff scrutinising prices when values appear doubtful or vary abnormally. These procedures are documented checks; they do not establish that every outlet or transaction is covered or independently audited. See PBS’s Methodology of Price Statistics: Base Year 2015–16 and the Price FAQs.
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How to read the published percentage changes
PBS reports the SPI’s movement against two different comparison periods. The weekly rate compares the index with the previous week; the year-over-year rate compares it with the corresponding week one year earlier. A percentage is meaningful only with its comparison period attached: it answers how much the index changed over that span, not how much every item or every household’s total expenses changed.
The weekly report also provides results for consumption quintiles Q1 through Q5 as well as a combined figure. Quintiles group households by consumption level; separate readings show that the index’s movement can differ across those groups. The combined figure is a summary, not a guarantee that any particular household’s spending rose at that exact rate.
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SPI is not the same as monthly CPI
The SPI complements, rather than replaces, Pakistan’s broader Consumer Price Index (CPI). PBS describes CPI as a monthly consumer-price measure, with national, urban and rural versions in the current 2015–16-base series. The SPI is the weekly essential-items indicator. PBS also publishes the Wholesale Price Index (WPI), which measures wholesale price movement monthly. The agency’s Price Statistics page describes these measures.
| Measure | What it tracks | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| SPI | Price movement for a defined basket of essential items | Weekly |
| CPI | Consumer prices, with national, urban and rural versions | Monthly |
| WPI | Wholesale price movement | Monthly |
A dated example: the week ended 11 March 2026
In its report for the week ended 11 March 2026, PBS said the combined SPI rose 1.89% week over week and 6.44% year over year. In that same report, the weekly changes across Q1 through Q5 were 0.66%, 0.94%, 1.12%, 1.50% and 2.49%, respectively. These are historical figures for that report, not current rates; consult the latest PBS SPI release before quoting a current reading.
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What the published method does—and does not—establish
PBS’s 2015–16 methodology discusses household consumption evidence used for rebasing and consumption quintiles. It says the base-year Household Integrated Income and Consumption Survey collected data from 24,238 households; that is the survey count reported in the 2019 methodology, not the number of SPI price observations.
PBS’s FAQ gives a weighted Laspeyres formula as its general answer on price-index computation, and SPI reports show weights and quintile results. However, the cited materials do not fully specify every SPI-specific aggregation step and weight mechanic. It is therefore safer to describe the published coverage, collection process and comparisons than to present an unsupported step-by-step SPI formula. For the official definition and current readings, use PBS’s Price Statistics page and weekly reports.
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