hosted by
funded by
Country Report Mauritius February 2011
PDF
HTMLEconomic performance: Inflation jumps to 6.1%
Data from the Central Statistics Office show that year-on-year inflation rose to 6.4% in January. After remaining steady between 2% and 2.7% in the first nine months of 2010, the rate of inflation rose sharply in the last quarter, reflecting large increases in food and transport caused by rising world food and oil prices. The consumer price index rose by 2.1% in December alone, taking annual inflation above 6% for the first time since December 2008; this was the biggest monthly increase since the index was rebased in 2007.
| Consumer prices | |||||||||||||
| (% change, year on year) | |||||||||||||
| 2010 | 2011 | ||||||||||||
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | |
| Fooda | 3.1 | 3.0 | 3.3 | 3.2 | 3.0 | 2.6 | 3.2 | 2.9 | 4.2 | 4.8 | 5.1 | 6.3 | 5.5 |
| Housing & utilitiesb | -2.0 | -1.9 | -1.8 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 0.2 | -1.0 | -1.4 | 1.9 | 1.9 |
| Transportc | 1.9 | 2.3 | 2.7 | 2.2 | 1.2 | 2.6 | -1.4 | 3.2 | -1.1 | 2.6 | 5.1 | 7.2 | 10.3 |
| All items | 2.5 | 2.4 | 2.3 | 2.7 | 2.5 | 2.4 | 2.0 | 2.6 | 2.5 | 3.2 | 3.9 | 6.1 | 6.4 |
| 12-month average | 2.3 | 2.1 | 1.9 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 2.0 | 2.3 | 2.6 | 2.9 | 3.3 |
| a Weight of 28.6% in index. b Weight of 13.1% in index, includes water, electricity, gas and other fuels. c Weight of 14.7% in index. | |||||||||||||
| Source: Central Statistics Office. | |||||||||||||
Download the numbers in Excel
The BoM has warned that interest rates may have to rise if this upward trend continues. On January 27th it published its Inflation Expectations Survey, which showed that one-half of the businesses surveyed expect average inflation to reach 5% in June (as does the Economist Intelligence Unit), compared with 2.9% in December. Earlier, on January 21st, the newly established Petroleum Pricing Committee (January 2011, Economic policy) increased the price of petrol and diesel by 8.5% and 12.3% respectively.
