Rising food and fuel costs are expected to have pushed inflation to its highest level in more than three years when official figures are released on Tuesday, underscoring the impact of the Brexit-battered pound on prices in the shops.

Economists predict that the data will show inflation, on the consumer prices index (CPI) measure, hitting 2.1% for February, up from 1.8% in January.

If proven correct, this forecast, from a Reuters poll of economists, would see inflation at its highest level since November 2013, and above the Bank of England’s government-set target of 2%.

The sharp fall in the pound since the Brexit vote last summer has raised the price of imported goods such as fuels, metals and food ingredients. The pressure on import costs has sparked some high-profile price tussles between suppliers and retailers, such as the row over Marmite last year. Earlier this year, Apple said it was raising prices in its UK app store by almost 25% to reflect sterling’s sharp depreciation. That currency effect has combined with a rise in global oil prices to push inflation higher in recent months, causing a rude awakening for consumers, who had enjoyed near-zero inflation throughout 2015 and the first half of 2016.

Howard Archer of consultancy IHS Markit predicts that Tuesday’s figures will confirm the rising trend for inflation: “Inflation is expected to have been lifted in February by significantly increased food prices. We expect consumer price inflation to trend markedly higher over the coming months, as sterling weakness increasingly feeds through, and overall higher oil and commodity prices impact. Additionally, several utility companies have announced electricity and/or gas price hikes in March and April.”

Philip Shaw of Investec is also expecting evidence of upward pressure on inflation from food as well as fuel. He sees a chance that fashion stores also got in on the price hikes in February, after cutting prices in January. “Clothing prices fell unexpectedly sharply last month, which may well herald a strong rebound this time,” he says.

Shaw and other economists are predicting that inflation will continue rising and go above 3% this year. Wage growth, meanwhile, has been slowing, so households are seeing their real – or inflation-adjusted – incomes deteriorate.

That pattern prompted a leading thinktank to warn recently that workers are on course to suffer an unprecedented 15 years of lost earnings growth. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said average earnings would be no higher in 2022 than they were in 2007, and predicted that welfare cuts would compound the financial pain for many.

Such forecasts bode ill for hopes that the UK economy can continue to show resilience in the face of Brexit-related uncertainty. Consumer spending, the main driver of growth, is expected to flag as incomes are squeezed.

The rise in inflation will intensify the debate at the Bank of England over the right time to increase interest rates from their current record low of 0.25%.

The Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC), under governor Mark Carney, has maintained that it is happy to let inflation rise some way above its target as it trades off the need to support growth and jobs with keeping price rises in check. But the minutes of its meeting last week suggested a split was emerging over how much inflation should be tolerated before taking borrowing costs higher again.

One of the nine MPC policymakers, Kristin Forbes, voted for a rate rise at that meeting, while others indicated that it would not take much for them to join her. But economists are doubtful whether enough supporters would emerge for a rate hike any time soon.

“The risks to the MPC’s near-term forecast for output are probably skewed slightly to the downside, and there is a risk that uncertainty will build as article 50 is triggered and the EU negotiations get under way,” say Paul Hollingsworth and Scott Bowman at consultancy Capital Economics. “As a result, we continue to think that the MPC will hold off until around the end of next year before raising interest rates.”

This week’s inflation data will mark the first time the Office for National Statistics will have used a broader, but controversial, measure called CPIH, which is “consumer prices index including owner-occupiers’ housing costs”.

Some economists say CPIH is lacking as a measure because by using figures based on “rent equivalence”, it does not truthfully capture people’s experience of the housing market. CPIH lost its status as a “national statistic” in 2014 and has yet to regain it. Capital Economics thinks that CPIH rose to 2.2% in February, from 1.9% in January.