Brace for even higher inflation for remainder of 2012

CPI will surge in September and will stay elevated till December, government estimates.

Rising COE premiums this August will trigger a spike next month, which coupled with imputed rentals should keep CPI around the current high and result in a year average of between 4-4.5%, according to an outlook report from the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in a joint release.

"Given the generally sluggish economic environment, the pass-through of wages and other business costs to consumer prices will continue at a more moderate pace than that seen earlier this year. At the same time, global commodity prices remain below year-ago levels which will contain domestic oil and food inflation in the near term. MAS Core Inflation will remain close to the current rate over the next few months and average between 2.5-3.0% for the whole year," said MTI and MAS.

"Meanwhile, CPI-All Items inflation will stay elevated and average 4.0-4.5% in 2012. Notably, CPI-All Items inflation is expected to rise in September due to the surge in COE premiums in August, as well as the base effects associated with the disbursement of government rebates," they added.

"For the rest of 2012, COE premiums are likely to remain sharply higher than a year ago. Imputed rentals will also continue to add significantly to overall CPI inflation, as leasing contracts are renewed at higher rentals, especially in the HDB segment," they said further.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia