SINGAPORE, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's consumer price index (CPI) grew 0.4 percent year-on-year in January, following a 0.5-percent increase in December 2018, said the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in a joint statement on Monday.
The MAS Core Inflation, which excludes the costs of accommodation and private road transport, declined from 1.9 percent on a year-on-year basis last December to 1.7 percent this January.
The authorities said the lower CPI inflation and MAS Core Inflation largely reflected a slower pace of increase in the cost of electricity and gas, which outweighed higher services inflation.
The MTI and MAS also revised their forecast for Singapore's CPI inflation in 2019 from 1-2 percent to 0.5-1.5 percent, considering the sharp decline in global oil prices in recent months. But the forecast for MAS Core Inflation was unchanged at 1.5-2.5 percent.
