Inflation in Pakistan is likely to hit fresh peaks, and is projected to reach over 37% year-on-year (YoY) in May against 36.4% recorded in April, JS Global Securities, a brokerage house, said in a report on Monday.
“We expect the datapoint to clock in at a record-high of 37.27%, as current workings suggest another sequential increase of 1.07% month-on-month,” said JS Global.
“This would take 11MFY23E headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) to 29.03%,” it added.
The brokerage house was of the view that the rise in inflation is attributed to a higher increase in food prices, which is 30% of the CPI basket.
“We expect food inflation to clock in at 47.99% YoY this month, with a sequential increase of 0.81% MoM, finally pacing down from its recent run rate of ~4.5% MoM since the past four months,” it said.
It added that the recent decline in POL product prices is not expected to reflect in May’s readings, which is expected to be the peak for inflation readings.
After May “we expect the YoY trend to soften on account of base affect from June,” it said.
