Singapore stuck in deflation for third consecutive month
TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — The Republic’s headline inflation fell for a third consecutive month last month due to sharper price declines in direct oil-related items as well as lower food and services prices, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said in a joint statement today (Feb 23).
The consumer price index (CPI) for all items fell 0.4 per cent last month from a year earlier, easing further from a 0.1 per cent drop in December.
The decline was slightly more than the median projection of a 0.3 per cent fall by economists in a Reuters poll and marked the slowest since December 2009, when the CPI dipped 0.5 per cent in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Prices of direct oil-related items were 13.6 per cent lower last month, after falling 7.4 per cent a month earlier, as petrol pump prices and electricity tariffs were cut further following the correction in global oil prices, the statement said.
Excluding the costs of accommodation and private road transport, core inflation slowed to 1 per cent last month from 1.5 per cent in December, on lower electricity tariffs and food and services prices.
Looking ahead, MAS and MTI said global oil prices should remain much lower for the whole of 2015 than the average price of US$93 (S$126.56) recorded last year, but domestic food inflation could however remain elevated in the long term due to higher prices of regional food supplies.
They also said that the core and CPI-All items inflation could ease further before rising in the second half of the year in tandem with some recovery in oil prices, and also in view of a low base in the fourth quarter of last year.
