OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada’s annual inflation rate eased more than expected to 5.9% in January due to a so-called base-year effect, even as food and mortgage interest costs continued to soar, Statistics Canada data showed on Tuesday.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected annual inflation to edge down to 6.1% from 6.3% in December. Month over month, the consumer price index was up 0.5%, again lower than analysts’ forecast of a 0.7% gain after a 0.6% decline in December.
Statscan noted that the annual rate was impacted by downward pressure from the base-year effect of January 2022, when prices had risen amid Russia-Ukraine tensions as well as supply chain disruptions.
Excluding food and energy, prices rose 4.9% compared with a rise of 5.3% in December.
The average of two of the Bank of Canada’s core measures of underlying inflation, CPI-median and CPI-trim, came in at 5.1% compared with 5.3% in December.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Dale Smith in Ottawa; Editing by Mark Porter)
