Singapore’s consumer price index (CPI) for June grew 5.3 percent from last year and was higher than May’s 5.0 percent.
The inflation number was also slightly above the 5.2 percent median forecast of 13 economists polled by Reuters.
Meanwhile, the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) core inflation measure rose 2.7 percent year-on-year and was flat month-on-month.
MAS and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) declared that “core inflation will ease further in 2H2012 and average between 2.5 to 3.0 percent for the whole year”.
However, headline inflation is expected to stay in the upper half of the 3.5 to 4.5 percent official forecast this year.
“It’s a tad higher than expected. It’s always a case of playing cat and mouse with the two culprits – housing or private transportation CPI,” noted Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB Research.
“This time it was the housing rental side which caused the CPI to be a little bit more firm than what we were going for.”
“The good thing is that despite the ups and downs of housing and private transportation costs, the underlying inflation – the MAS core – remained relatively stable at 2.7 percent,” Song added.
Source PropertyGuru – 2012 Jul 24
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