Year-on-year, price increases were recorded for miscellaneous services (6.9 percent); electricity, gas and water (6.1 percent); housing (5.8 percent); meals bought away from home (4.7 percent); food (excluding meals bought away from home) (3.4 percent); transport (3.0 percent); miscellaneous goods (2.9 percent); clothing and footwear (2.0 percent) and alcoholic drinks and tobacco (1.1 percent).
On the other hand, prices of durable goods fell 3.8 percent.
A Government spokesman commented that, looking ahead, the still-low imported inflation and the feed-through of the milder increases in fresh-letting residential rentals in 2013 should help contain the upside risks to inflation in the near term.