Malaysia’s CPI up by 1.5%
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures headline inflation, rose 1.5% in June to 121.4 as compared against 119.6 in the same month last year.
Department of Statistics (DoS) chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said out of 552 items covered in the CPI, 381 showed positive growth in June as from June 2018, while 131 items posted negative growth and 40 items remained unchanged.
“The abolishment of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to zero-rated on June 1, 2018 led to an increase in some of the index of the main groups,” he said in a statement today.
Mohd Uzir said this mainly included furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance (+3.1%), recreation services and culture (+2.7%), food and non-alcoholic beverages (+2.3%) and housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (+2.3%).
On a monthly basis, he said the CPI remained unchanged compared to May, while the CPI in the second quarter this year increased 0.7% to 121.3 compared with 120.5 in the same quarter of the previous year.
“The increase was mainly contributed by the index of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (+2.0%), food and non-alcoholic beverages (+1.5%), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (+1.5%) and education (+1.3%).
“On a quarterly basis, the CPI increased 0.4 per cent compared with the first quarter of this year,” he added.
The DoS also reported that in terms of the CPI by states, three, namely Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur (+2.2%), Penang (+2.2%) and Selangor and Federal Territory Putrajaya (+1.7%) surpassed the national CPI rate of 1.5% in June compared with June 2018, while Perak and Johor showed the same rate of increase as the national CPI.
It added that all states registered an increase in the index of food and non-alcoholic beverages.
The highest increases were recorded by Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur (+4.0%), Penang (+2.8%), Perak (+2.7%) and Selangor and Federal Territory Putrajaya (+2.6%), surpassing the national index of food and non-alcoholic beverages in June this year.
