Inflation dipped slightly in July in Bangladesh but remains stubbornly near 10% due to high consumer prices as consumer price index (CPI) remained almost unchanged at 9.69% by official count.
The latest rate of inflation surpassed the annual target by nearly 4 percentage points.
In June, inflation was also the same at 9.7%, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) data showed.
As per its measure the monthly moving average (12-month average) also remained high at 9.2%.
Food account component of the inflation at national level stood at 9.8% in July while non-food or core inflation was 9.5%.
And rural inflation remained slightly higher than the urban rate. The rural general inflation was recorded at 9.8% while the urban unchanged at 9.4%.
The BBS has modernized the CPI compilation from April 2023 to a greater extent by changing the base index from 2005-06 to 2021-22, introducing a new basket of goods and services with weights.
This is basically a paradigm shift in CPI compilation in Bangladesh following the latest 2020 CPI manual of the IMF.
National, urban, and rural CPIs have been constructed as per the 2021-22=100 base index instead of 2005-06=100.
It has constructed 12 groups according to the Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) instead of the ILOs eight groups.
The new basket contains a total of 383 items (goods and services) with 749 varieties.
There are 127 food items with 242 varieties and 256 non-food items with 507 varieties.
Currently, the CPI data are collected from 154 markets (urban, rural, and city corporation areas) instead of 140 markets from 64 districts.
The statistical bureau followed Laspeyer's formula for CPI compilation.
