The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) yes­ter­day re­port­ed that T&T’s in­fla­tion rate fell to 1.3 per cent last month, com­pared to Oc­to­ber 2022.

The All-Items In­dex record­ed for Oc­to­ber 2023 was 124.1, which was 1.3 per cent high­er than the 122.5 that the in­dex record­ed one year ear­li­er.

Prices of food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages in­creased by 1.86 per cent, mov­ing from 144.5 in Oc­to­ber 2022 to 147.2 in Oc­to­ber 2023.

Food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages con­sti­tute 17.3 per cent of the All-Items In­dex, which is on­ly sur­passed by costs as­so­ci­at­ed with home own­ing, which ac­count for 27.5 per cent of the All-Items In­dex

For the one-year pe­ri­od be­tween Oc­to­ber 2022 and Oc­to­ber 2023, al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co in­creased by 7.4 per cent. But cloth­ing and foot­ware de­clined by 4.8 per cent, hous­ing, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty gas and oth­er fu­els fell by 1.3 per cent and home own­er­ship was down by 1.8 per cent.

Ac­cord­ing to the CSO: “The In­dex for Food and Non-Al­co­holic Bev­er­ages de­creased from 148.2 in Sep­tem­ber 2023 to 147.2 in Oc­to­ber 2023, re­flect­ing a de­crease of 0.7 per cent. Con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this de­crease was the gen­er­al down­ward move­ment in the prices of irish pota­toes, fresh whole chick­en, onions, ed­does, pump­kin, plan­tains, chive, dasheen, sweet pota­toes and ochroes.

“How­ev­er, the full im­pact of these price de­creas­es were off­set by the gen­er­al in­creas­es in the prices of ta­ble mar­garine, car­rots, mel­on, green sweet pep­pers, par­boiled rice, fresh carite and grapes, me­l­on­gene, bo­di and brown sug­ar.”