The av­er­age price of food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages rose by 8.6 per cent be­tween Ju­ly 2022 and Ju­ly 2023, ac­cord­ing to the Re­tail Price In­dex (RPI) com­piled by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO).

The Ju­ly read­ing of the in­crease in the price of food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages is down sharply from the in­crease of 17.3 per cent be­tween Jan­u­ary 2022 and Jan­u­ary 2023.

Food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages ac­count for 17.3 per cent of the RPI.

In da­ta re­leased yes­ter­day, the CSO al­so re­port­ed that head­line in­fla­tion in T&T—com­pris­ing the all-items in­dex of the RPI—was 4.6 per cent high­er in Ju­ly 2023 than in Ju­ly 2022.

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2022 and Jan­u­ary 2023, the all-items in­dex in­creased by 8.3 per cent, ac­cord­ing to the CSO da­ta.

The CSO’s RPI com­pris­es a num­ber of com­po­nents in­clud­ing:

• Home own­er­ship–19.3%

• ↓Food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages–17.3%

• ↓Trans­porta­tion–14.7%

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the CSO said the all-items in­dex of re­tail prices for the month of Ju­ly 2023 was 123.5 which rep­re­sents an in­crease of 0.6 points or 0.5 per cent above the All Items In­dex for June 2023.

It not­ed there was an in­crease in the in­dex for food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages, which stood at 145.3 in June 2023 but rose to 147.5 in Ju­ly 2023, re­flect­ing an in­crease of 1.5 per cent.

This was pushed by price in­creas­es for chilled or frozen beef, whole chick­en–fresh, fresh beef, chilled or frozen pork, cel­ery, pump­kin, toma­toes, mixed fresh sea­son­ing, grapes and cab­bage.

How­ev­er, the CSO in­di­cat­ed that these price in­creas­es were off­set by the gen­er­al de­creas­es in the prices of carite-fresh, king fish-fresh, ched­dar cheese, pi­men­to, bo­di, white flour, salmon-fresh, cu­cum­ber, steak-fresh and soya bean oil.

The in­dex al­so stat­ed Ju­ly 2023 saw in­creas­es in the sub-in­dex for al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co of 0.5 per cent, cloth­ing and footwear of 1.2 per cent, fur­nish­ings, house­hold equip­ment & rou­tine main­te­nance of the house of 0.6 per cent, health of 0.3 per cent, com­mu­ni­ca­tion of 0.2 per cent, recre­ation and cul­ture of 0.9 per cent, ho­tels, cafes and restau­rants of 0.4 per cent and mis­cel­la­neous goods and ser­vices of 0.4 per cent.

How­ev­er, there were de­creas­es for hous­ing, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, gas and oth­er fu­els and trans­port of 0.2 per cent. All oth­er sec­tions re­mained un­changed.