Bangladesh's inflation rate rose to 9.33% in March, maintaining an unfortunate steady growth.
It was up 55 basis points from 8.78% reported in February, said Planning Minister MA Mannan after a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) in the capital on Tuesday.
The spike in consumer price index (CPI) was just behind the 10-year high of 9.52% seen in August, driven by higher commodity prices in the global markets.
The government is set to update the consumer inflation index with the addition of several goods and services, with FY22 as the new base year as price rises have upset indices locally and globally.
Officials say the updated system to measure inflation is likely to be launched next fiscal year, beginning in July, as the existing one uses FY06 as base year and fails to portray a real picture of inflation.
The update with the additional items in the basket will result in new weightings for the components of its CPI basket.
People in the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) said they already finalized lists of the goods and services, both for urban and rural areas.
Many items, including mobile financial services (MFS), were not covered in the 2006 index.
Currently, the BBS collects price data from 140 (64 from urban, 64 from rural, and 12 from Dhaka City Corporation) main markets across the country to calculate the price indices.
Three price quotes per item are collected from each of the markets.
Prices of 151 food items as well as 271 non-food items in urban areas, 133 food items as well as 185 non-food items in rural areas (2005-06) are collected.
Data is usually collected from select shops in each market or selected units or service providers in case of services.
In constructing price indices, the average price for each item is considered.