July 26, 2010

 

Egypt suffers inflation due to food price hikes

The Central Bank of Egypt has attributed the rising inflation volume as a result of soaring food prices led by poultry and rice.

 

The inflation rate recorded a monthly rate of 0.32% during June at the time when the price of paid services and consumer goods remained stable. The annual rate of core inflation has stabilised at 6.7% compared to 6.69% during the previous month, the Central Bank reported.

 

Central Bank issued a statement on Thursday (July 22) on inflation rates during June, said that the volume of inflation in June rose by 0.5% during the month of June, "where still the increase is less than the monthly average achieved in 2009 (1.1%), and the annual rate of inflation, increased slightly to 10.66% compared to 10.59% in May."

 

According to the Central Bank, prices of poultry were 2.3% higher in June, and has risen more than 16% since the beginning of the year. This comes at a time when red meat prices remained unchanged after a slight increase, which amounted to 0.33% in May of this year, which the bank said "led to the stability of the cumulative rise in the prices of red meat since the beginning of the year at 13.14%."

 

It also noted a decline in fish and other seafood, slightly up by 0.83% from the previous month, having remained unchanged during the month of May.