Controlled food price helped reduce inflation
Overall wage increased at a higher rate than the inflation rate, which implies higher purchasing capacity for the wage earner
Inflation reduced slightly and stood at 5.57 percent in January this year due to some control over the rise in food prices, said a report compiled by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The January inflation rate of 5.57 percent indicates that a commodity, which was Tk100 last year, will now cost Tk105.57. One will have to buy a lower volume of the commodity if one's income remains static.
Meanwhile, wage rate increased by 6.56 percent this January compared to that of last January.
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Overall wage increased at a higher rate than the inflation rate, which implies higher purchasing capacity for the wage earner.
The BBS published the report titled "Consumer Price Index (CPI), Inflation Rate and Wage Rate Index (WRI) in Bangladesh" on its website recently.
According to the report, price of food items increased only 0.07 percent in January compared to the previous month, which helped reduce food inflation.
Food item inflation dropped to 5.12 percent in January from 5.88 percent in December. But nonfood item inflation jumped to 6.30 percent from 5.55 percent in the same period.
Price of nonfood items increased by 1.75 percent in just one month while house rent, price of fuel and lighting increased by 4.07 percent.
Among other items, price of furniture increased by 1.39 percent, which leads to a higher nonfood inflation.
The report said point to point (compared to the same time of the previous year) rate of general inflation was 5.75 percent in December last year and dropped by 0.18 percentage point within one month.
The report also said moving average of inflation for the last twelve months reached 5.60 percent. Average inflation for the period of February 2018 to January 2019 was 5.51 percent.
The report revealed a 5.52 percent inflation in rural areas in January, which was 5.76 percent in December.
Inflation in urban areas also dropped to 5.67 percent in January from 5.73 percent in December.
Rural areas observed 5.16 percent inflation in food items and 6.22 percent in nonfood items last month.
Food inflation dropped to 5.03 percent and nonfood inflation jumped to 6.41 percent in urban areas in January.
The BBS calculates the Consumer Price Index every month to find the rate of inflation, which shows the degree of average increase in the cost of living over the last one year.
