The inflation rate soared to 10.4% in February 2023 compared to 10.2% in the previous month, the National Institute of Statistics (INS) said on Sunday.

Consumer prices rose by 0.5% in February 2023 against 0.8% in January. This is mainly due to the increase by 2.6% in the prices of food products and by 0.9% in the furniture, household items and routine household cleaning products group, the INS specified.

However, prices of clothes dropped by 4.6% due to the winter sale.

The 2.6% monthly increase in prices of food products is mainly due to the rise in the prices of poultry by 5%, fresh vegetables by 4.5%, sheepmeat by 4.1%, eggs by 3.4% and beef by 3.3%.

However, the 4.6% drop in prices of clothing items (0.4% in January) is explained by the start of the winter sale season.

As such, prices of clothing items fell by 5%, footwear by 4.8%, clothing accessories by 1.4% and fabrics by 1.1%.

Prices of foodstuff, manufactured products and services up

Prices of foodstuff edged up by 15.6% over a year, due to the hike in the prices of eggs by 32%, sheep meat by 29.9%, poultry by 25.3%, edible oil by 24.6% and beef by 22.9%.

Likewise, the prices of manufactured products posted a 9.8% year-on-year rise due to the increase in the prices of building materials by 8.7%, clothing items by 9.4% and routine household cleaning products by 10.3%.

Services also saw a 7.3% year-on-year rise as the prices of restaurants, coffee shops and hotel services were up by 9.8% and public and private transport services by 15.9%.

Core inflation down to 7.9% in February

The core inflation (excluding food and energy) dropped from 8.1% in January to 7.9% in February.

Prices of unregulated products rose by 11.2% within a year. Prices of regulated products were also up by 8% and unregulated foodstuff increased by 18.4% against 6% for regulated foodstuff.

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