February 23, 2015

In January, consumer prices fell 0.2% over the previous month, which followed the 0.1% drop tallied in December. According to Statistics Singapore, January’s decline was mainly driven by lower prices for housing and utilities, healthcare and transport. Conversely, food and non-alcoholic beverages, as well as education, recorded higher prices than in the previous month.



Consumer prices fell 0.4% annually in January, which came in below both the 0.1% drop recorded in December and the 0.3% decline that the markets had expected. January’s result marked the lowest CPI reading in five years. As a result of January’s notable decline, annual average inflation inched down from December’s 1.0% to 0.9%, which marked the lowest level since June 2010.



The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) annual core inflation measure, which excludes the cost of accommodation and private road transport, dropped from 1.5% in December to a 1.0% in January.

The MAS expects average inflation to be between minus 0.5% and plus 0.5% in 2015. FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast panelists expect inflation to average 0.5% in 2015, which is down 0.4 percentage points from last month’s estimate. For 2016, the panel sees average inflation at 1.5%.