By Promit Mukherjee
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Consumer prices in Canada continued to climb up at a soft pace in December, data showed on Tuesday, helped by a sales tax break which kicked off from the mid of the month and brought down prices of alcohol, restaurant foods and children’s clothing.
Annual inflation rate dropped to 1.8%, Statistics Canada said, a slightly lower than expected and a tick below prior month’s 1.9%. On a month-on-month basis the consumer price index contracted by 0.4%.
On a annual basis, prices for alcoholic beverages purchased from stores declined 1.3% in December, compared with a 1.9% increase in November, and food purchased at restaurants dropped by 1.6% in December from a rise of 3.4% the previous month.
The prices included in the Consumer Price Index are inclusive of all excise and other taxes paid by consumers, and as a result any tax break brings down the prices recorded by the statistics agency.
The sales tax break, which impacted a tenth of the components of the CPI basket, will continue until mid-February and the month of January will see a full month of exemption versus 18 days in December, Statscan said.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecasted the annual inflation rate at 1.9% and a contraction of 0.4% on a monthly basis.
The consistent easing of prices, which has stayed at or below the Bank of Canada’s target of 2% since August, has helped the bank to slash its key policy rate by a total of 175 basis points from June to 3.25%.
A further drop in inflation in December could prompt the central bank to cut rates again next week, although the BoC Governor Tiff Macklem had said last month that further rate cuts would be gradual.
Currency markets are betting an almost 80% chance of a 25 basis point rate cut on Jan. 29.
The BoC’s preferred measures of core inflation, CPI-median and CPI-trim, also edged down.
CPI-median – or the centermost component of the CPI basket when arranged in an order of increasing prices – eased to 2.4% from 2.6% in September, while CPI-trim – which excludes the most extreme price changes – dropped to 2.5% from downwardly revised 2.6% in the prior month.
Shelter prices – rents and mortgage costs – rose by 4.5% in December on an annual basis, slightly down from the prior month but still elevated.
