GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

T&T’s in­fla­tion rate for March 2024 was 0.8 per cent, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) re­port­ed yes­ter­day as it re­leased the con­sumer price in­dex (CPI) for last month.

The in­fla­tion mea­sures the per­cent­age change in the all items in­dex for the month of March 2024 com­pared to March 2023,

The CSO not­ed this re­mained un­changed from what was record­ed for the pre­vi­ous month (Feb­ru­ary 2024/Feb­ru­ary 2023).

The in­fla­tion rate for the pe­ri­od be­tween March 2022 and March 2023 was 7.3 per cent.

Con­sumers en­joyed a dip in some food prices for March, they were forced to pay high­er prices for some lo­cal veg­eta­bles such as me­l­on­gene, bo­di, ochroes and pump­kin, the CSO said.

It not­ed that the in­dex for food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages de­creased from 147.9 in Feb­ru­ary 2024 to 146.2 in March 2024, re­flect­ing a de­crease of 1.2 per cent.

Con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this de­crease was the gen­er­al down­ward move­ment in the prices of fresh whole chick­en, toma­toes, cu­cum­ber, ched­dar cheese, ta­ble mar­garine, cel­ery, fresh king fish, plan­tains, fresh carite and soya bean oil.

How­ev­er, the COS said the full im­pact of these price de­creas­es were off­set by the gen­er­al in­crease in the prices of grapes, hot pep­pers, or­anges, me­l­on­gene, bo­di, ochroes, pump­kin, frozen whole chick­en, par­boiled rice and oth­er fruit drinks.

The all items in­dex cal­cu­lat­ed from the prices col­lect­ed for the month of March 2024 was 123.8, rep­re­sent­ing a de­crease of 0.3 points or 0.2 per per cent be­low the all items in­dex for Feb­ru­ary 2024.

A fur­ther re­view of the da­ta for March 2024 com­pared with Feb­ru­ary 2024 re­flect­ed an in­crease in the sub-in­dex for al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co of 1.1 per cent.

This pe­ri­od al­so showed a de­crease in the sub-in­dices for cloth­ing and footwear of 0.2 per cent.

All oth­er sec­tions re­mained un­changed.

What is the CPI?

The con­sumer price in­dex is a weight­ed av­er­age of the pro­por­tion­ate changes in the prices of a spec­i­fied set or ‘bas­ket’ of con­sumer goods and ser­vices be­tween two pe­ri­ods of time.

The CPI mon­i­tors the prices of a fixed bas­ket of goods and ser­vices in 15 ar­eas (lo­cale) in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Month­ly price sur­veys are con­duct­ed in gro­ceries, shops and lo­cal mar­kets for food and pe­tro­le­um items. Price are col­lect­ed quar­ter­ly for oth­er items that are not as vari­able.

The da­ta from the house­hold bud­get sur­vey (HBS) was used to de­ter­mine:

* Which items were se­lect­ed for the bas­ket of items mon­i­tored by the CPI;

* The weights of these items i.e. their rel­a­tive im­por­tance com­pared with all oth­er items in the bas­ket and,

* The weights of the ar­eas mon­i­tored by the CPI.

Changes in the CPI can be used to as­sess price changes as­so­ci­at­ed with the cost-of-liv­ing. The CPI is one of the most fre­quent­ly used sta­tis­tics for iden­ti­fy­ing pe­ri­ods of in­fla­tion or de­fla­tion.