COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s inflation according to the National Consumer Price Index (NCPI) was down to 7.1 percent in May 2017 from 8.4 percent in April, the Census and Statistics Department said. The NCPI for all items for the month of May 2017 was 121.8, an increase of 0.8 index points or a percentage of 0.7 was noted in May 2017 compared to that of April 2017 for which the index was 121.0, the department said in a release yesterday. This increase represents increase in expenditure value of 251 rupees in the “Market Basket”.Contributions to inflation from food and non-food groups in May 2017 are 4.6 percent and 2.5 percent respectively, whereas contributions of these two groups to the inflation in May 2016 was 2.1 percent and 3.1 percent respectively, the department said in a release. “The monthly change was due to the increases of expenditure value of food items by 0.43% and non-food items by 0.21% respectively.” The increases in expenditure value in index for food items were reported for vegetables (0.23%), red onions (0.13%), fresh fish (0.12%), rice (0.10%), coconuts (0.05%), dried fish (0.04%), garlic (0.04%) and potatoes (0.02%).
The increases in expenditure value in index were reported for non food commodity groups of ‘miscellaneous goods and services’ (0.10%), ‘transport’ (0.06%), ‘housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels’ (0.04%), ‘furnishing, household equipment and routine household maintenance’ (0.01%) and ‘clothing and footwear’ (0.01%). Further, the groups of health, education and restaurant and hotels recorded very slight expenditure value increases compared to the previous month. However, expenditure value decrease was observed for the group of alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics.
