Home › Methodology
How we check prices
Sources
- AMIS Punjab (Agriculture Marketing Information Service) — Punjab mandi prices, daily on weekdays. The mandi price is wholesale, per 40kg.
- Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) — atta (wheat flour) 20kg national average and city split, weekly, published on Fridays.
- Karachi Cotton Association (KCA) — cotton spot rates, Monday to Saturday, per 37.324kg maund.
- Government announcements — support / indicative prices, procurement and release-price decisions, via the Prime Minister's Office / PID and reputable reporting of them.
Cadence and the stale-data rule
AMIS figures are checked daily on weekdays; PBS figures weekly, on the Friday SPI release; policy announcements the same day they are made. If AMIS has no new release, the page shows the last release date prominently and does not silently roll the date forward. A chart shows a gap where there is no data point — it never invents one.
Mandi vs retail
A mandi price is wholesale — what traders pay in the grain market. A retail price is what a shop charges, and it includes milling, packing, transport and margin. The two are never mixed in one table without saying which is which. For wheat, the gap at current rates is about Rs 33 per kg (mandi about Rs 113.65–113.78 per kg; atta about Rs 147.07 per kg).
Units
Wheat mandis quote per 40kg. A traditional maund is 37.324kg — cotton uses it; wheat mandis in Punjab now quote per 40kg. A price quoted “per maund” without the weight is not comparable to anything until the weight is stated. Rice adds variety: paddy is not milled rice, and basmati is not IRRI.
Conflicts
When sources disagree, the range is published with both figures and their dates — never one settled number. When a competitor contradicts itself on the same page, its figure is not used. When a row cannot be verified against AMIS or PBS, it is not published as a verified row; it may be noted as reported-but-unverified, clearly labelled, as with two Punjab mandis on the Punjab page.
AI assistance
Drafts on this site may be assisted by AI, but every figure is checked by a human against AMIS / PBS before publishing. No AI output is published with a number that has no cited official source. Any future forecast will be a labelled confidence range, never a single guaranteed number.