Egypt's annual consumer price inflation plunges to 12.8% in Feb

Egypt's annual urban consumer price inflation plunged to 12.8 per cent in February from 24.0 per cent in January, decelerating even faster than analysts had expected, data from statistics agency CAPMAS showed on Monday.

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Due to the base effect, the exceptionally high price increases of the last two years are no longer being reflected in the statistics, analysts said.

Fifteen analysts polled by Reuters last week had expected inflation to cool to a median 14.5 per cent.

Month on month, prices were 1.4 per cent higher in February than in January.

Food and beverage prices were up by an annual 3.7 per cent after rising 0.2 per cent from January.

Inflation had been climbing since early 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which prompted foreign investors to withdraw billions of dollars from Egyptian treasury markets.

Headline inflation reached a record high of 38.0 per cent in September 2023.

The price rises were fuelled in part by rapid growth in the money supply. M2 money supply expanded by an all-time high of 32.1 per cent in the year to end-January, central bank data showed.