Inflation Recorded at 6.5% for First Two Months of 2023

And if you have been noticing that basic food items are costing you more, then that’s what’s happening. SIB figures as they relate to inflation and the consumer price index for the first two months of 2023 show an increase. The cumulative inflation rate for the first two months of 2023, when compared to the same period in 2022, stood at 6.5%. Statistician Melvin Perez explains. 

Melvin Perez, Statistician II: “While prices rose across all types of food items the increase in this category was mainly to higher prices for cereal products, meats, cooking oils, dairy products and fresh fruits and vegetables. Looking at the table we can see that majority of the items had an increase by more than 10% specifically flour, egg, vegetable oil, watermelon, tomatoes, onions, Irish potatoes, sweet pepper, soy sauce and coconut milk. Nonetheless we had some lower prices recorded for the period such as pigtail, black beans and red kidney beans. Now let’s look at the food and non alcoholic beverages category consumer price index for the past five years. It is important to know that this category has the highest weight of all other categories making it up 1/4 of the household spending in the basket of goods and services so any movement within this category will affect the national index movement as we can observe in the past three years where food prices has been increasing significantly so it has also influenced the all item index to increase.”