CPI: Housing sector sees drop in prices in December 2021

The Planning and Statistics Authority (PSA) on Saturday released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the month of December 2021. The CPI of December 2021 reached 102.14 points, showing an increase of 0.65 percent when compared to CPI of November 2021.
Compared to CPI of December 2020 on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, an increase of 6.47 percent has been recorded in the general index (CPI) of this month. The initial rate of change between the full year 2021, and the entire year 2020 will be about 2.3 percent, PSA said.
An analysis on month-on-month basis of CPI for December 2021 showed that there were six main groups, where respective indices in this month have increased. These groups are ‘Recreation and Culture’ that increased by 4.89 percent, ‘Communication’ by 1.27 percent, ‘Clothing and Footwear’ by 0.55 percent, ‘Housing, Water, Electricity and other Fuel’ by 0.52 percent, ‘Transport’ by 0.12 percent, and slightly increase in ‘Miscellaneous Goods and Services’ by 0.05 percent.
A decrease has been recorded only in Food and Beverages by 0.64 percent. ‘Tobacco’, ‘Furniture and Household Equipment’, ‘Health’, ‘Education’ and ‘Restaurants and Hotels’ had remained flat at the last month’s price level.
A comparison of the CPI of December 2021 with the CPI of December 2020 shows that an increase of 6.47 percent has been recorded. This y-o-y price increase was primarily due to the prices rising in nine groups namely ‘Recreation and Culture’ by 37.31 percent, followed by ‘Transport’ by 11.28 percent, ‘Food and Beverages’ by 6.73 percent, ‘Clothing and Footwear’ by 6.17 percent, ‘Furniture and Household Equipment’ by 3.64 percent, ‘Miscellaneous Goods and Services’ by 2.57 percent, ‘Restaurants and Hotels’ by 2.11 percent, ‘Communication’ by 1.88 percent and ‘Education’ by 1.09 percent.
A decrease has been shown in price levels in ‘Housing, Water, Electricity and other Fuel’ by 2.71 percent, and ‘Health’ by 1.39 percent. No changes were recorded in the ‘Tobacco’ segment.
The CPI of December 2021 excluding ‘Housing, Water, Electricity and other Fuel’ group stood at 105.99 points and recorded an increase of 0.68 percent, when compared to the index of November 2021, and by 8.76 percent when compared to the CPI of December 2020.