The rate of in­fla­tion in T&T for May 2024 was 0.9 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), which re­leased its Con­sumer Price In­dex for last month yes­ter­day.

The in­fla­tion rate is the mea­sure­ment of the per­cent­age change in the all-items in­dex for the cur­rent month com­pared with the same month the pre­vi­ous year.

For the pe­ri­od be­tween May 2023 and May 2024, the av­er­age cost of com­mu­ni­ca­tions in­creased by 8.5 per cent, health­care was high­er by 7.9 per cent and food and non-al­co­holic rose by 3.1 per cent.

For the pe­ri­od, home own­er­ship was down by 2.1 per cent, while the cat­e­gories cloth­ing and footwear and hous­ing, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, gas and oth­er fu­els both de­clined by 2.1 per cent.

Food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­age ac­count for 17.3 per cent of the all-items in­dex, hous­ing, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty gas and oth­er fu­els ac­count for 27.5 per cent of the all-items in­dex, while trans­porta­tion makes up 14.7 per cent of the in­dex.

T&T’s of­fi­cial sta­tis­ti­cal body said the in­fla­tion rate for the pe­ri­od be­tween April 2023 and April 2024 was 0.5 per cent.

The in­fla­tion rate for the pe­ri­od be­tween May 2022 and May 2023 was 5.7 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the CSO.

The CSO al­so not­ed that the all-items in­dex, cal­cu­lat­ed from the prices col­lect­ed for the month of May 2024, was 123.6, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 0.2 points or 0.2 per cent above the all-items in­dex for April 2024.

Mean­while, the in­dex for food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages in­creased from 146.1 in April 2024 to 147.4 in May 2024, re­flect­ing an in­crease of 0.9 per cent.

Con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this in­crease was the gen­er­al up­ward move­ment in the prices of white flour, toma­toes, cel­ery, cu­cum­ber, pump­kin, par­boiled rice, car­rots, or­anges, me­l­on­gene and cab­bage.

How­ev­er, the full im­pact of these price in­creas­es was off­set by the gen­er­al de­crease in the prices of fresh whole chick­en, soya bean oil, fresh carite, ta­ble mar­garine, ochroes, fresh king fish, onions, plan­tains, corn­flakes and tea in bags.

A fur­ther re­view of the da­ta for May 2024, com­pared with April 2024, re­flect­ed de­creas­es in the sub-in­dices for al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co of 0.1 per cent, and cloth­ing and footwear of 0.3 per cent.

This pe­ri­od al­so showed an in­crease in the sub-in­dex for health of 0.1 per cent.

All oth­er sec­tions re­mained un­changed.

In a no­tice on its web­site dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 16, 2024, the CSO an­nounced that it was dis­con­tin­u­ing the use of the Re­tail Price In­dex as the mea­sure of the rate of in­fla­tion and start­ing to use the Con­sumer Price In­dex “in an ef­fort to main­tain con­sis­ten­cy with in­ter­na­tion­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy."

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the CSO said the year-on-year in­fla­tion rate, which com­pares changes in the all-items in­dex of the cur­rent month over the same month of the pre­ced­ing year, would now be the of­fi­cial rate quot­ed. That is in keep­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al norms “and to en­sure that there is one of­fi­cial rate quot­ed by both the Cen­tral Bank and the CSO.”