Inflation rises to 2.4% in Feb.

• Increase largely driven by both food and non-food items

Inflation rose to 2.4% in February from 1.2% in January, largely on non-food items, the Census and Statistics Department said yesterday.    

Headline inflation as measured by the year-on-year change in the National Consumer Price Index (NCPI, 2013=100) increased to 2.4% in February 2019 from 1.2% in January 2019 mainly due to the base effect. 

Meanwhile, year-on-year Non-food inflation increased to 6.7% in February 2019 from 6.5% in January 2019 while Food inflation also increased to -2.9% in February 2019 from -4.8% in January 2019.

The change in the NCPI measured on an annual average basis marginally decreased to 1.7% in February 2019 from 1.8% in January 2019. The month on month change of the NCPI was -0.5% in February 2019. This was mainly due to decrease in the prices of the items in the Food category where vegetables,

green chillies, rice, coconuts, limes, big onion and banana recorded significant decreases.

However, on month on month basis, the prices of the items in the Non-food category increased among which the Education sub-category recorded the highest increase. Further, Health, Transport, Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, and Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels sub-categories also reported increases during the month. 

The core inflation, which reflects the underlying inflation in the economy, increased from 5.1% in January 2019 to 5.5% in February 2019 on year-on-year basis. Meanwhile, annual average core inflation also increased from 2.7% in January 2019 to 3% in February 2019.