Inflation up 3.5% in January

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation on the consumer level, for January 2016 rose 3.5 per cent to 114.5 compared with 110.6 recorded in the same month last year, the Statistics Department said.

Bernama reported that, the higher CPI was led by increases in all 12 major groups, of which the indices for alcoholic beverages and tobacco group (+22.6 per cent); miscellaneous goods and services (+5.5 per cent); health (4.6 per cent); restaurants & hotels (+4.5 per cent); furnishings, household equipment & routine household maintenance (+4.1 per cent); and food & non-alcoholic beverages (+3.9 per cent).

"The index for food & non-alcoholic beverages (weight: 30.2) rose 3.9 per cent, year-on-year, in January 2016 while the index for non-food (weight: 69.8) recorded an increase of 3.4 per cent," it said in a statement.

The department said on a monthly basis, the CPI for January 2016 decreased 0.3 per cent to 114.5 from 114.8 recorded in December 2015.

Of the 12 major groups, nine recorded increases while three main groups registered decreases in January 2016, namely transport (-2.9 per cent); communication (-2.4 per cent) and alcoholic beverages and tobacco (-0.1 per cent).

The department also said the core inflation rose 3.6 per cent in January 2016 compared to the corresponding month in 2015.

Updated "Basket"

According to the Statistics Department, the "basket" of goods and services of CPI has been updated based on the Household Expenditure Survey conducted for twelve reference months from January to December 2014.

Prior to this, the "basket" of goods and services is based on the Household Expenditure Survey conducted from April 2009 to March 2010.

Updating of the "basket" of goods and services is undertaken to ensure the statistics reflect the current patterns in consumer expenditure.

During this updating "basket" exercise, the CPI basket weights for individual items, classes and higher level aggregates are updated.

Subsequently, the weights are then expressed at the prices of December 2015 in order to chain indices across the old and new baskets.

The period of December 2015 is called the link month.