The In­dex of Re­tail Prices for the month of Sep­tem­ber in­creased by 0.1 point or 0.1 per cent over the pre­vi­ous month, ac­cord­ing to da­ta just re­leased by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice.

The In­dex for food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages moved from 111.2 to 111.4, an in­crease of 0.2 per cent. This was due to in­creas­es in the prices of chan­na, fresh whole chick­ens, toma­toes, fresh carite, Irish pota­toes, sweet pota­toes, canned sar­dines, cel­ery, hot pep­pers and fresh shark.

How­ev­er, the was a gen­er­al de­crease in the prices of me­l­on­gene, cab­bage, pump­kin, gar­lic, fresh steak (beef), cu­cum­ber, ed­does, grapes, fresh duck and let­tuce. There were in­creas­es in the sub-in­dices for cloth­ing and footwear of 0.3 per cent and health of 2 per cent. All oth­er sec­tions re­mained un­changed.

The In­fla­tion rate for Sep­tem­ber–mea­sured as the per­cent­age change in the In­dex for Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber 2016/Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber 2015–was 3.1 per cent. This rep­re­sents a de­crease from 3.2 per cent which was record­ed in the pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od. The in­fla­tion rate for the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od was 5.6 per cent.