Bangladesh’s inflation slows for the fifth month after hitting decade-high

January inflation was 8.57 percent as winter vegetable prices fell

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 6 Feb 2023, 04:12 PM
Updated : 6 Feb 2023, 04:12 PM

Bangladesh’s inflation has been on a downward trend for the fifth month in a row and dropped to 8.57 percent in January from 8.71 percent in December.

The Consumer Price Index had hit 9.52 percent in August, the highest in a decade.

According to the latest data released by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics on Monday, food inflation in the first month of the year was 7.76 percent, down from 7.91 percent in December.

Non-food inflation also fell to 9.84 percent from 9.96 percent.

The fall in both food and non-food inflation led the index to decrease, said Ziauddin Ahmed, a director of BBS.

However, the index was much higher than the 5.86 percent posted in January 2022 before the Russia-Ukraine war destabilised the global market and supply chain.

A BBS official said a fall in the prices of winter vegetables contributed to the inflation slowing down. Non-food inflation did not fall much as prices remained high in the international market.

In January, inflation in the rural areas was 8.67 percent, higher than 8.39 percent in the urban areas.

Bangladesh saw a more than 9.5 percent rise in inflation for the last time in the July-April period of 2011-12 fiscal year. In September 2011, inflation increased by 11.97 percent.

The government set an average inflation target of 5.6 percent for this fiscal year.

But prices of food and other commodities have been rising worldwide for the past few months as the Ukraine-Russia war dealt a heavy blow to the global economy, which was still recovering from the pandemic-era sluggishness.