THE rate of inflation for the year 2022 showed positive signs as it eased to 3.3% in line with Finance Ministry predictions, Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli said.

According to Rafizi, inflation, measured by the consumer price index, hit a six-month low of 3.8% in December, down from 4.0% in November. 

“A month-to-month comparison shows inflation for December 2022 recorded a decrease of 0.2% compared to October and November. 

“Meaning, inflation is easing from its peak around August and September. 

“The graph is coming down. That’s a good sign, which means we now hope to gradually move towards normal inflation, something around 2%,” Rafizi said at a press conference in Putrajaya today.

Rafizi said that there are signs that the inflation will start to level off soon, but not immediately. Despite this, he said the signs are encouraging.

“We saw that inflation peaked around August and September, but now it is coming down and flattening.

“We hope that in January – taking the Chinese New Year celebration into consideration – inflation will remain around 3.8% and starts to reduce thereafter,” Rafizi said. 

However, he singled out the increase in the price of food at restaurants and hotels as the main contributor to inflation, adding that controlling this figure required the co-operation of all parties.

“Consumers can play a role in jointly injecting elasticity between demand and supply in order to control inflation,” he said. 

Rafizi said the Department of Statistics Malaysia has launched the OpenDOSM data platform, related to official statistics published by the department and other agencies. 

“This platform also contains 28 million item prices in various locations across the country derived through the PriceCathcer application developed by the Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Ministry. 

“The published PriceCathcer data is the latest with an interval of one day. The government hopes that this can help consumers make more accurate choices, making demand more elastic while controlling price increases,” he said. – January 25, 2023.