MALAYSIA’S Consumer Price Index (CPI) for February remained unchanged at 129.8 or 3.7%, the Department of Statistics Malaysia said.

In a statement today, chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the country’s inflation rate in February was still driven by restaurants and hotels (7.4%) and food and non-alcoholic beverages (7%).

Nevertheless, the slower rise in the transport group (3.7%) compared with January 2023’s 4% had offset a further hike in inflation to a certain extent, he said.  

“The rise in Malaysia’s inflation was also due to an increase in spending on furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance (3.4%) miscellaneous goods and services (2.5%) and healthcare (1.8%),” he said.

Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels and recreation services and culture all recorded an increase of 1.7% while education rose by 1.6%, alcoholic beverages and tobacco (0.8%) and clothing and footwear (0.4%), he said.

Uzir said the food and non-alcoholic beverages group contributed 29.5% of the CPI, noting that out of the 230 food items, 203 or 88.3% recorded price hikes.

He said the food at home component, which made up almost 58% of the food and non-alcoholic beverages group, recorded a higher increase of 5.8%, compared with 5.1% in January.

Food away from home recorded a lower rise of 8.9% as against January’s 9.3%.

Uzir said to reduce the cost of living and ease the inflation of food away from home, the government introduced the Menu Rahmah initiative on January 31.

“However, continuous heavy rain from end-December 2022 to February 2023 in several states has led to increases in food prices, especially vegetables, where the inflation for the subgroup recorded a significant rise of 5.8% year-on-year,” he said.

Uzir said core inflation, which measures changes in the prices of all goods and services (excluding volatile prices of fresh food and government-controlled prices of goods), registered a slower rise of 3.9% y-o-y in February.

The highest hike was recorded by the food and non-alcoholic beverages group at 7.6%, he said.

The restaurants and hotels group also recorded an increase of 7.4%, followed by transport (6.2%), furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance (3.4%) and housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (1.9%). – Bernama, March 24, 2023.