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Indonesia’s January inflation rate cools to 5.28% year-on-year
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s January inflation cooled to its slowest rate in five months, but remained above the central bank target, official data show.
The headline annual inflation rate in January was 5.28%, compared to the 5.40% expected by economists polled by Reuters.
The rate also eased compared to 5.51% in December and was the lowest since August.
For November 2022, the year-over-year inflation rate was 5.4%.
January’s inflation was driven by prices of some food products, air fares and higher cigarette prices, Margo Yuwono, head of Statistics Indonesia, told reporters.
The core inflation rate, which excludes government-controlled price and volatile food prices, eased to 3.27%, down from 3.36% in December and compared with a 3.33% forecast.
Indonesia’s central bank aims to bring down the headline inflation to within its target range of 2% to 4% in the second half of this year.
It had hiked the policy interest rate by a total of 225 basis points since August.
It has been reported that the inflation rate for consumer prices in Indonesia moved over the past 61 years between 1.6% and 1,136.3%.
For 2021, an inflation rate of 1.6% had been calculated. — Reuters