Food products keep holding inflation back
July 20, 2017 09h00 AM | Last Updated: September 04, 2017 09h21 AM
Food products, responsible for 25% of household expenditure, recorded the main negative resullt in the Extended National Consumer Price Index 15 (IPCA-15) of July, with a decrease of 0.14 percentage points. Most of those products got cheaper from June to July: potato (-19.07%), tomato (-8.48%) and fruits (-4.00%) were the main ones.
As a consequence, the IPCA-15 fell 0.18% in July, a figure below the June rate of 0.16%. That is the smallest change for a month of July; the same had been observed in 2003, -0.18%. The current index is the lowest since September 1998 (-0.44%).
Housing, on the other hand, has remained on an upward trend. The increase of 0.24% results, to a great extent, from the 1.66% change in bottled gas.
The IPCA-15 is an indicator calculated by the IBGE. It measures inflation between the second half of a month and the first half of the reference month. The index encompasses families whose incomes range between one and 40 minimum wages, in the metropolitan areas of Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Recife, São Paulo, Belém, Fortaleza, Salvador, Curitiba, Brasília and Goiânia.
Text: Pedro Renaux
Image: Pixabay
