| Rising fuel costs drive inflation higher in May |
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| Wednesday,June 18,2008 Posted: 23:08 BJT(08 GMT) |
| From:BoB Article type:Reproduced |
In May, headline inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), was 12.1 percent, an increase of 1.0 percent from 11.1 percent in April.
The main contributory factor was a further large rise in the operation of personal transport component of the transport commodity group, due to further increases in the prices of petrol and diesel. Prices in this sub-group rose by 42 percent over the past twelve months, up from 34.6 percent in April.
similar increases in the costs of paraffin also led to rising inflation, from 6.6 percent to 8.1 percent, for water, electricity, gas and other fuels.
For most other commodity groups inflation continued to be broadly stable, with only modest increases for food and non-alcoholic beverages (from 18.4 percent to 18.5 percent), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (from 7.3 percent to 7.6 percent), and furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance (from 2.5 to 3.1 percent).
Declines in the annual rates of prices increase were registered in other areas, including, health (from 16.0 percent to 15.3 percent), recreation and culture (0.7 percent to -0.4 percent) and restaurants and hotels (from 12.2 percent to 11.6 percent), while inflation rates for clothing and footwear and communication remained negative.
By tradeability, inflation rose by 1.3 percent to reach 14.9 percent for tradeable goods and services, while it remained at 5.7 percent for the non-tradeable goods and services. The rise in inflation for tradeable goods and services continues to be influenced by imported tradeables where inflation rose from 13.4 percent to 15.5 percent; in contrast, inflation for domestic tradeables fell from 14.1 percent to 13.8 percent.
Core inflation increased from 10.5 percent to 11.0 percent and from 8.8 percent to 9.1 percent, using the trimmed mean measure and by excluding administered prices, respectively.
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