# Inflation & prices

How prices move in Pakistan, from the headline number down to the group and the city. Sources are the **PBS** (CPI, WPI, SPI) and the **SBP** (inflation measures).

| | |
|---|---|
| Modules | `economic` (CPI flagships), `prices` (inflation measures, cost of living) |
| Frequency | Monthly (CPI, WPI); weekly (cost-of-living index) |
| Endpoint | [`GET /v1/series/{id}`](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/api-series.md) |

## Headline CPI & WPI (PBS, base 2015-16)

| Id | What it is | History |
|---|---|---|
| `inflation.cpi.national.yoy` | **Headline CPI inflation, year-on-year %** | Jul 2017 -> |
| `inflation.cpi.national` - `inflation.cpi.urban` - `inflation.cpi.rural` | CPI index levels | Jul 2017 -> |
| `inflation.cpi.urban.yoy` - `inflation.cpi.rural.yoy` | Urban and rural YoY % | Jul 2017 -> |
| `inflation.wpi` - `inflation.wpi.yoy` | Wholesale Price Index and its YoY | Jul 2017 -> |

## CPI by COICOP group

Urban groups from 2019 and rural groups from 2016, 13 groups each: `inflation.cpi.urban.<group>` / `inflation.cpi.rural.<group>`, where `<group>` is one of `general`, `food`, `alcohol_tobacco`, `clothing`, `housing`, `furnishing`, `health`, `transport`, `communication`, `recreation`, `education`, `restaurants`, `misc`.

```bash
curl -H "X-API-Key: pk_live_xxx" \
  "https://api.pakdatahub.com/v1/series/inflation.cpi.urban.food?transform=yoy&from=2022-01-01&sort=asc"
```

## Inflation measures (SBP, Jul 2016 ->)

YoY, MoM and period-average rates for national, urban and rural CPI, food, non-food, core (NFNE) and WPI:

| Id | What it is |
|---|---|
| `inflation.national_cpi_inflation_measure_year_year` | National CPI, YoY % |
| `inflation.national_cpi_inflation_measure_month_month` | National CPI, MoM % |
| `inflation.urban_food_cpi_inflation_measure_year_year` | Urban food inflation, YoY % |
| `inflation.urban_nfne_core_inflation_inflation_measure` | Urban core inflation (non-food non-energy) |
| `inflation.rural_nfne_core_inflation_inflation_measure` | Rural core inflation |
| `inflation.wpi_food_inflation_measure_year_year` | WPI food, YoY % |

Long-run CPI inflation back to **1964** (monthly, to 2020): `industry.general_cpi_inflation_measure_year_year_2`.

## Cost of living by city (weekly)

`cost_of_living.<city>` for 17 cities plus `cost_of_living.national`. It's an index (first week = 100) built from the weekly SPI prices of essentials, so you can compare how fast living costs are rising in `karachi`, `lahore`, `peshawar`, `quetta` and the other cities. There's a free tool: [cost of living by city](https://pakdatahub.com/tools/cost-of-living).

The item-level weekly prices are in [Commodities](https://pakdatahub.com/docs/data-commodities.md).

Use cases: real (inflation-adjusted) values, wage and contract indexation, rate forecasting, food-vs-fuel shock decomposition. See the free [inflation calculator](https://pakdatahub.com/tools/inflation-calculator) and the [inflation module page](https://pakdatahub.com/data/inflation).

---
Source: https://pakdatahub.com/docs/data-inflation - PakDataHub docs index: https://pakdatahub.com/docs/llms.txt