Pakistan’s CPI inflation surges by 12.42 in Dec 2019
1 min readKARACHI: Pakistan’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) decreased by 0.29 per cent over November 2019, but it increased by 12.42 per cent compared to December 2018, the Federal Bureau of Statistic said here on Wednesday.
The Bureau said in its statement that the CPI increased to 11.72 per cent in the first half of the 2019-20 compared to 6.04 per cent in the same period last year.
In contrary, the Topline Brokerage House said the December 2019 New CPI inflation clocked in at 12.63 per cent, which is based on new method and on MoM basis a decline was seen of 0.3 per cent.
For the first half (July-December), the NCPI clocked in at 11.11 per cent compared to 5.96 per cent in the same period last year, the brokerage house said.
The change in base year means the economy’s price levels in FY16 will now be the base against which all existing prices will be calculated for the CPI.
As per the new base year, the lowest CPI was recorded in July at 8.4 per cent.
According to International Monetary Fund (IMF), the average CPI inflation is projected to decelerate slightly to 11.8 per cent in this fiscal year as administrative and energy tariff adjustments are expected to offset the effects from weak domestic demand.