Egypt inflation declines to 5.1% during 2020

Newspaper Title: https://www.arabnews.com/

Newspaper Number:

Monday - 11 January 2021

CAIRO: Egypt’s inflation rate declined to 5.1 percent at the end of last year, compared with 8.5 percent in 2019.

According to the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), the annual inflation rate across the country was about 6 percent for December 2020, compared with about 6.8 percent for the same period in the previous year..

Egypt’s consumer price index also reached 110.6 points for December 2020, a 0.5 percent decrease compared with November 2020.

CAPMAS attributed the decline to a 10.1 percent decrease in the price of vegetables, a 0.6 percent fall in the price of fish and seafood, a 0.2 percent decline in the price of meat and poultry, a 0.1 percent decrease in the price of milk, cheese and eggs and a 0.6 percent drop in the price of ready-made garments.

During the Central Bank of Egypt’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting at the end of last December, the bank decided to keep interest rates unchanged.

The Egyptian Central Bank said that the rise in general inflation rate last November reflected a temporary supply shock in the prices of some vegetables and a slight increase in the annual rate of core inflation to 4 percent during November, compared with 3.9 percent during October, which indicated that inflationary pressures were contained.

The central bank expected that the average rate of general inflation would fall below a level of 6 percent during the last quarter of this year.