Local Point to Point Inflation falls further, 7.8% in February  

 

  • For February 2023, the All-Jamaica Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 0.5%. The point-to-point inflation rate for the month was 7.8 per cent, and indicates that inflation has been decelerating over the last three months.
  • For February, the increase in the monthly inflation was largely driven by the 2.7% increase in the index of the ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels’ division. The upward movement was, however tempered by a negligible decline (-0.1%) in the heavily weighted ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages’ division as prices continued to fall within the class ‘Vegetables, tubers, plantains, cooking bananas and pulses’.
  • The All-Jamaica Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 7.8% for the period February 2022 to February 2023. This was the smallest point-to-point increase since the period ending in December 2021. The main contributors to this upward movement were the divisions: ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages’ up by 11.3%, ‘Restaurants and Accommodation Services’ up 15.6% and ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels’ up by 3.7%.
  • The main contributors to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) between February 2022 and February 2023 were ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages’, ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels’, and ‘Restaurants and Accommodation Services’. All classes within the Food division rose during the period. Further, the housing division was impacted by increased rental and ‘Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels’ costs. Increased prices for meals consumed away from home were the main cause of the increase in the ‘Restaurants and Accommodation Services’ index.
  • On March 29, 2023, the BOJ will host its monetary policy meeting.  The central bank had indicated in earlier press releases that is necessary to allow the pass-through effects of previous rate hikes to take effect on deposit and loan rates. With that said, we anticipate that the bank will continue holding off on further policy rate increases at this time. Point-to-Point inflation is projected to continue falling and enter the BOJ’s target range of 4.0% to 6.0% by the December quarter.

(Source: STATIN)