Feb Consumer Price Index rises 3.7pct on-year

 

Malaysia’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) for February 2023 remained unchanged at 129.8 or 3.7 percent, said the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DoSM).

In a statement today, chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the increase in Malaysia’s inflation in February 2023 was still driven by restaurants and hotels (+7.4 percent) and food and non-alcoholic beverages (+7 percent).

Nevertheless, the slower increase in the transport group (+3.7 percent) compared with January 2023’s 4 percent had offset a further rise in inflation to a certain extent, he said.

“The increase in Malaysia’s inflation was also due to the increase in furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance (+3.4 percent); miscellaneous goods and services (+2.5 percent), and health (+1.8 percent),” he said.

Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels and recreation services and culture all recorded an increase of 1.7 percent, respectively, while education increased by 1.6 percent, alcoholic beverages and tobacco rose by 0.8 percent, and clothing and footwear expanded by 0.4 percent, he said.

Meanwhile, Uzir said the food and non-alcoholic beverages group contributed 29.5 percent of the total CPI, noting that out of the 230 food items, 203 items or 88.3 percent recorded price increases.

He said the food at home component, which made up almost 58 percent of the food and non-alcoholic beverages group, recorded a higher increase of 5.8 percent compared with 5.1 percent in January 2023.

At the same time, food away from home recorded a lower increase of 8.9 percent against January 2023’s 9.3 percent, he added.

He noted that to reduce the cost of living and ease the inflation of food away from home, the government introduced the Menu Rahmah initiative on Jan 31, 2023.

“However, continuous heavy rain from end-December 2022 to February 2023 in several states has led to increases in food prices, especially vegetables, where the inflation for the subgroup recorded a significant rise of 5.8 percent year-on-year (y-o-y),” he said.

Uzir added that core inflation, which measures changes in the prices of all goods and services (excluding volatile prices of fresh food as well as government-controlled prices of goods), registered a slower increase of 3.9 percent y-o-y in February 2023.

The highest increase was recorded by the food and non-alcoholic beverages group at 7.6 percent, he said.

In addition, the restaurants and hotels group also recorded an increase of 7.4 percent, followed by transport (6.2 percent), furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance (3.4 percent) and housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (1.9 percent). 

- Bernama