ISLAMABAD, Jan 7: Budget of an average citizen for purchase of just 17 food items has gone up to 82.41 per cent because of the skyrocketing prices in the past few years leaving a small portion of income for rest of the activities, a survey of statistics division reveals.

This situation is worse in the rural areas, where the share of monthly expenditure on these 17 items has reached to 85 per cent owing to shortages and high transportation cost of these commodities.

Of these 17 items, even 56.29 per cent is spent monthly on five commodities—wheat (15.72 per cent), ghee (6.16 per cent), fresh milk (19.09 per cent), vegetables (8.66 per cent) and sugar (6.66 per cent). This clearly shows the unexpected increase in price of these commodities maximum portion of income goes in account of purchasing these items.

These facts were revealed in the Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) 2005-06, released here on Monday evaluating the consumption expenditure pattern for different commodity groups across the country.

The share level of other commodity groups particularly transport and communication, education, housing and misc. has gone up in 2005-06 over 2004-05. Further analysis reveals that apparel, footwear, cleaning\laundry have shown decreasing trend towards the consumption share from 2001-02 to 2005-06.

House rent is the second after food group, which accounts for 15.19 per cent of the total monthly expenditure.

Further disaggregation of expenditure on major food items by quintiles shows the consumption pattern among different income classes according to their needs and preferences.

Among the food items, the lowest income class accorded more priority to wheat, milk, ghee, vegetables and sugar, whereas the richest class has different priority.

They spend more on milk, wheat, vegetables, fruits, mutton, beef, sugar and chicken, etc.

The poor spend 87.73 per cent of the total food expenditure on these seventeen major food items, while the rich class spends 76.66 per cent, which means that they have different preferences for consumption expenditures.

However, the government claims through this figure that poverty line has improved which otherwise has worsened. Per capita monthly consumption in quantity reveals that wheat is significantly less consumed in urban areas as compared to rural areas.

The per capita monthly consumption of major food items includes—-wheat (8.16 pc), tea (71.57 grams), fresh milk (6.37kg), butter (40.62 grams), vegetables (3.55 kg) and sugar (1.26 per cent), across the country.

Among the consumption of households on fuel and lighting, the major share of expenditure in urban areas is incurred on electricity (64 per cent) and gas (24.10 per cent) as against (39.98 per cent) and (7.49 per cent) in rural areas. However, in rural areas 30.14 per cent expenditure occurred on burning of firewood, 6.78 per cent on dung cake.

This shows that rich households mostly use electricity and gas whereas the poor prefer lower cost products such as firewood, dung cake and others—-agriculture waste, candles, matches and electric items.

The pattern of consumption expenditure of households by quintiles shows that level of consumption expenditure in urban areas is higher than the rural areas. Further analysis by quintiles reveals that average consumption expenditure of the richest class in urban areas are more than three time higher than the lowest income class and two and half time more than the same income class living in the rural areas.

Consumption expenditures have increased by 16 per cent in 2005-06 as compared to 2004-05, which are almost same both for rural and urban areas.