Pakistan’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation slumped to 6.9% year-on-year in September, its lowest since January 2021 and down from 9.6% in August, data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday, mostly owing to a high base effect, lower commodity prices, and a stable currency.
The PBS data, released on Tuesday, showed that on a month-on-month basis inflation fell 0.5% in September as against an increase of 0.4% in the previous month.
The country’s annual consumer price inflation rate slowed to 9.6% in August, the first single-digit reading in almost three years, which analysts have widely pinned on the fact that the currency has remained stable over the past 12 months.
The inflation figures significantly outperformed both market expectations and official consensus, as the finance ministry’s last monthly economic outlook had projected inflation to slow to around 8-9% in the next two months (September-October).
