The headline rate of inflation in the 12 months to the end of March was 4.5 per cent, compared to 5.3 per cent in the 12 months to the end of December last year.
However, perhaps more significantly for the local economy, the underlying rate of inflation was 2.7 per cent in the year to March 2005 – the lowest increase since the States Statistics Unit started compiling the figures in 1999.
The underlying rate was 3.4 per cent in the year to the end of December.
And the slowdown in the rate of price increases was described as ‘encouraging’ by Finance and Economics Committee president Senator Terry Le Sueur .
He said that this was the seventh quarter in succession that the underlying rate – known as the RPI (X), which excludes the cost of housing – had fallen.
