Amid ever-in­creas­ing con­cern over the ris­ing cost of liv­ing, Gov­ern­ment’s of­fi­cial da­ta agency, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), this week re­port­ed that the prices of food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages were 17.33 per cent high­er in Jan­u­ary 2023 than in Jan­u­ary 2022.

The prices of food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages were 17.32 per cent high­er in De­cem­ber 2022 than in De­cem­ber 2021. The CSO re­port in­di­cat­ed that food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­age prices in Jan­u­ary 2023 were 25.04 per cent high­er than in Jan­u­ary 2021.

In its lat­est re­port of the Re­tail Price In­dex (RPI), the CSO al­so not­ed that the cost of trans­porta­tion in Jan­u­ary 2023 was 14 per cent high­er than a year ear­li­er.

The in­crease in the cost of trans­porta­tion main­ly re­sult­ed from the de­ci­sion by the Gov­ern­ment to in­crease the price of fu­els twice last year—on April 19, and in the Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion:

• Those price in­creas­es raised the cost of diesel by 29.32 per cent last year from $3.41 a litre to $4.41 a litre;

• The price of su­per gaso­line rose by 40.24 per cent in 2022 from $4.97 per litre to $6.97 per litre;

• And the price of pre­mi­um gaso­line in­creased by 34.78 per cent, mov­ing from $5.75 to $7.75 per litre. Fu­el prices were raised be­cause of the in­crease in the price of crude oil that fol­lowed Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine.

Prices for recre­ation and cul­ture were 11 per cent high­er in Jan­u­ary this year than last year and prices at ho­tels, cafes and restau­rants were record­ed as be­ing 9.9 per cent high­er for the first month of 2023 than 12 months ear­li­er.

More mod­er­ate price in­creas­es were not­ed for al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co (up 0.3 per cent); com­mu­ni­ca­tion (up 0.1 per cent) and cloth­ing and footwear (up 0.9 per cent), ac­cord­ing to the CSO.

No in­crease in prices was record­ed for ed­u­ca­tion and the cat­e­go­ry hous­ing, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, gas and oth­er fu­els.

The CSO, which falls un­der the con­trol of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, re­port­ed that the All Items In­dex of prices in the econ­o­my was, on av­er­age, 8.32 per cent high­er in Jan­u­ary this year than Jan­u­ary last year.

The Jan­u­ary All Items In­dex of prices, which is de­scribed as the head­line in­fla­tion rate, was mar­gin­al­ly low­er that the 8.73 per cent in­crease the CSO re­port­ed for De­cem­ber 2022.

Re­po re­port

The CSO’s pub­li­ca­tion of the Jan­u­ary 2023 da­ta on in­fla­tion comes as the Cen­tral Bank is due to make its quar­ter­ly Mon­e­tary Po­lice An­nounce­ment to­day. In that re­port, the Cen­tal Bank analy­ses the im­pact of var­i­ous fac­tors on the price of goods and the avail­abil­i­ty of cred­it in T&T and an­nounces the re­po rate, which in­flu­ences in­ter­est rate through­out the econ­o­my.

In the March 16, 2023 con­clud­ing state­ment fol­low­ing its two-week long Ar­ti­cle IV con­sul­ta­tion, a team from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund ad­vised the Cen­tral Bank to that an in­crease in the re­po rate should be “se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered."

The IMF team said: “The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CBTT) has main­tained its re­po rate at 3.5 per­cent since March 2020 to sup­port the re­cov­ery of the econ­o­my. In­creas­ing the pol­i­cy rate should be se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered to con­tain in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures and nar­row the neg­a­tive in­ter­est rate dif­fer­en­tials with the US mon­e­tary pol­i­cy rate.”

Re­spond­ing to that ad­vice from IMF at a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter cit­ed a com­ment he said was made Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire dur­ing their dis­cus­sions with the IMF team. Hi­laire is re­port­ed to have said that “un­like the Fed­er­al Re­serve in the US, which has a le­gal man­date to use in­ter­est rates to con­tain in­fla­tion, we have no such man­date in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Cen­tral Bank's man­date is "the pro­mo­tion of such mon­e­tary, cred­it and ex­change poli­cies as would fos­ter mon­e­tary and fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and pub­lic con­fi­dence and be favourable to the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

One-month change

Fo­cus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on the change in food and non-al­co­holic prices be­tween the end of De­cem­ber 2022 and Jan­u­ary 2023, the CSO said: “The In­dex for Food and Non-Al­co­holic Bev­er­ages in­creased from 149.0 in De­cem­ber 2022 to 150.3 in Jan­u­ary 2023, re­flect­ing an in­crease of 0.9 per cent.

“Con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this in­crease was the gen­er­al up­ward move­ment in the prices of chilled or frozen beef, fresh beef, pump­kin, chilled or frozen pork, fresh carite, fresh whole chick­ens, hot pep­pers, pi­men­tos, ta­ble mar­garine and evap­o­rat­ed milk.

“How­ev­er, the full im­pact of these price in­creas­es was off­set by the gen­er­al de­creas­es in the prices of cu­cum­bers, cel­ery, toma­toes, ochroes, let­tuce, chives, oth­er fresh goat, bo­di, mixed fresh sea­son­ing and patchoi.

“Price changes in this sec­tion for the month of Jan­u­ary 2023 ac­count­ed for a net over­all in­crease of 0.2 points in the All Items In­dex.”