The figures released this morning, Wednesday, January 29, in the Asian session from the Australian Institute of Statistics (ABS) showed that consumer price inflation rose by 2.5% in December on an annual basis compared to 2.3% in November, matching expectations, while it stabilized on a monthly basis at 0.2%, the same reading as February, while expectations indicated an increase to 0.3%.
The core index, which excludes volatile items such as car prices, fruits and vegetables, rose by 2.7% in December compared to 2.9% in November. In detail, the most significant increase in the index came from the food and non-alcoholic beverages sector, with an increase of 2.7%, while the alcohol and tobacco index rose by 5.8% and housing by about 1.5%.
In contrast, the annual decrease in electricity by 17.9% partially compensated for the increase in the monthly consumer price index.
Average quarterly inflation fell to 0.5% in the final quarter of last year, from 3.2% for the year as a whole, compared with 3.6% in the third quarter, confirming that the Reserve Bank of Australia has enough evidence that the deflation in prices is faster than it expected, and thus market expectations for a rate cut at its February meeting have risen to more than 95% today, after being around 50-60% earlier in the week and less than 25% in December.