{"id":18934,"date":"2023-04-21T10:29:54","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T10:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/sri-lanka-consumer-inflation\/"},"modified":"2023-04-21T10:33:56","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T10:33:56","slug":"sri-lanka-consumer-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/sri-lanka-consumer-inflation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka consumer inflation dips to 49.2% y\/y in March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Uditha Jayasinghe<\/p>\n<p>(Reuters) -Sri Lanka&#8217;s National Consumer Price Index (NCPI) eased to 49.2% year-on-year in March, after a 53.6% rise in February, the statistics department said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Food inflation eased to 42.3% in March from 49% in February, while non-food inflation was at 54.9%, the Department of Census and Statistics said in a statement. <\/p>\n<p>This is the first time inflation has dropped below 50% since August last year.<\/p>\n<p>The island&#8217;s 22 million people have faced soaring inflation since early 2022, partly caused by a severe foreign exchange shortage that triggered the worst financial crisis in seven decades and forced the country to default on its debt repayments.       <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Given the high base, subdued demand and improved costs because of lower global commodity prices and a more stable currency, Sri Lanka could see its inflation reducing to below 40% from the end of April onwards,&#8221; said Sanjeewa Fernando Senior Vice President Research at Asia Securities.    <\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka&#8217;s central bank kept interest rates steady in April and expressed optimism that inflation would decelerate sharply in the coming months, in its first policy decision since securing a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).<\/p>\n<p>Central bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe said a favourable base effect would kick in from next month with inflation projected to hit single digits by end-December.<\/p>\n<p>The NCPI captures broader retail price inflation and is released with a lag of 21 days every month.<\/p>\n<p>The Colombo Consumer Price Index (CCPI), released at the end of each month, eased to 50.3% in March from 50.6% in February, data from the statistics department showed. <\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru, editing by John Stonestreet and Louise Heavens)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/sri-lanka-consumer-inflation\/sri-lankans-celebrate-new-year-amidst-worst-economic-crisis-in-8\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEconomy\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3K0AA-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3K0AA-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Uditha Jayasinghe (Reuters) -Sri Lanka&#8217;s National Consumer Price Index (NCPI) eased to 49.2% year-on-year in March, after a 53.6% rise in February, the statistics department said on Friday. Food inflation eased to 42.3% in March from 49% in February, while non-food inflation was at 54.9%, the Department of Census and Statistics said in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":18935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1216],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-18934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-economy","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportEconomy\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3K0AA-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18934"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19066,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18934\/revisions\/19066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}