Ottawa, Canada | AFP | Tuesday 2/21/2023
Canadians paid 5.9 percent more for goods and services in January than a year earlier, as costs continued sliding from last year’s high, the government statistical agency said Tuesday.
Prices for cellular services and passenger vehicles led the deceleration, according to Statistics Canada, while mortgage costs and food prices continued to rise.
The inflation rate beat analyst expectations, after ending 2022 at 6.3 percent.
The surprise lower rate is expected give the Bank of Canada some room to consider its next move after pausing its aggressive monetary policy aimed at taming inflation last month.
“A new year brought some early signs of a new trend in consumer prices,” Desjardins analyst Royce Mendes commented in a research note.
“The softer-than-anticipated data will reinforce the Bank of Canada’s conditional commitment to keep rates on hold,” he said.
In a recent speech, Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said eight rate hikes in less than a year were “beginning to rebalance the economy” as inflation fell from a peak of 8.1 percent in June 2022.
But he added that more data was needed to better assess the situation.
© Agence France-Presse
