Inflation rises 0.53% in January, pressured by food prices, says IBGE

The IPCA (Extended Consumer Price Index) —which measures the country’s official inflation–, increased by 0.53% in January, the fourth month in a row with an increase, informed the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) this Thursday ( 9).

In the last 12 months, the accumulated inflation is 5.77%.

The market expected a monthly increase of 0.57% and an increase of 5.08% in 12 months.

Of the nine groups of products and services surveyed, only apparel showed a negative change.

The biggest overall positive impact on the index came from the food and beverages group, with a rise of 0.59%, contributing with 0.13 percentage points (pp) to the IPCA. Within this group, the highlights are potatoes (14.14%) and carrots (17.55%), says the institute.

Onion, on the other hand, recorded a 22.68% drop in price.

“The increases in these two cases are explained by the large amount of rain in the producing regions. On the other hand, we observed a drop of 22.68% in the price of onions, due to the greater supply coming from the Northeast and South regions, an item that had an increase of more than 130% in 2022”, says the research manager, Pedro Kislanov, in note.

The second major positive impact on the general index came from the group of transport (0.55%), contributing with 0.11 pp in January, with fuel registering a rise of 0.68%.

“In transport, the highlights were gasoline, up 0.83%, registration and licensing, which for the first time incorporated the fraction referring to the 2023 IPVA, up 1.60%, and new cars, up increase of 0.83%”, says Kislanov.

The IBGE also highlights a deceleration in the rise of the Health and personal care group (from 1.60% in December to 0.16% in January), mainly driven by the 1.26% decline in personal hygiene.

“This result is explained by the drop in the prices of perfumes and make-up items. We observed a drop in November in the context of sexta-feira Negraan increase soon after, in December, and, in January, a new fall with discounts being verified in the sector”.

Regarding the clothing group, which had the only drop in the IPCA, the research points out that it was the first retreat in the group after 23 months in a row of increases, with the last retraction having been registered in January 2021.

“The retreat in January 2023 is due to the fact that several stores have applied discounts on the prices that were practiced in December, for Christmas. The factor that most influenced the result was a drop of 1.37% in the women’s clothing item”, says Kislanov.

See the behavior of the other groups in the table below.

*Under update / published by Ligia Tuon