However, overall inflation grew by 0.5 percent from September last year, remaining the same from the month earlier. The cost of retail goods, electricity and gas, and accommodation saw a decline year-on-year.
Singapore’s core inflation gauge reached a more than three-year low in September as it rose 0.7 percent, a figure slightly less than the previous month, reported Thomson Reuters.
Core inflation does not include changes in the price of accommodation and private road transport.
The country’s headline consumer price index or overall inflation, however, grew 0.5 percent from September last year, remaining the same from the month earlier.
According to a joint news release of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), this was brought about by a drop in accommodation costs, while core and private road transportation slowed down.
The cost of retail goods dropped by 0.8 percent year-on-year (YoY) in September, moderating from the 1.5 percent decline in August. It primarily reflected smaller drops in the prices of footwear items and clothing, telecommunications equipment and medical products.
Food inflation reached 1.6 percent YoY in September, unmoving from the preceding month, due to a slower increase in the cost of non-cooked food offset a marginally better pace of increase in prepared meals’ prices.
Electricity and gas costs dropped 8.3 percent YoY in September, in contrast to the 7.8 percent decrease in August, mostly because of the dampening effect of the launch of the Open Electricity Market (OEM) covering electricity prices, noted the news release.
Private road transportation inflation was 0.5 percent YoY in September, smaller than the 0.6 percent mark in August. This was due to a smaller increase in Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) charges and a larger drop in petro prices.
Services inflation reached 1.4 percent YoY in September, compared to 1.7 percent in August. The current figure was caused by a drop in telecommunications service fees and airfares.
Accommodation costs dropped by 0.5 percent YoY in September, as compared to the 0.7 percent drop in August, with housing rentals declining gradually.
The country’s core inflation is seen to come in at the lower spectrum of the one to two percent range in 2019, and average from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent in 2020.
Overall inflation is expected to be about 0.5 percent this year and average from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent in 2020.
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Victor Kang, Digital Content Specialist at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email victorkang@propertyguru.com.sg
