SEOUL: South Korea’s consumer price growth slowed from the fastest pace in five and a half years in September as blistering summer inflation in food prices finally cooled.
South Korea’s consumer price index rose 2.1 per cent year on year in September, according to Statistics Korea, down from 2.6 per cent growth in August and coming in slightly below a median forecast of 2.2 per cent from economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The primary cause for the cool-down in headline inflation were prices for food and non-alcoholic beverages, which slowed to a year-on-year rise of just 3.3 per cent after peaking at 7.4 per cent growth in August. That jump had helped push the headline rate to its highest level since April 2012. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and oil prices, slowed to 1.6 per cent year-on-year growth from a 1.8 per cent rise the previous month. In month-on-month terms CPI rose 0.1 per cent, decelerating markedly from the 0.6 per cent rise seen in August.
