July food prices up 0.70%, indicates Advocata’s ‘Bath Curry Index’

The food prices in the country continued to increase in July, according to Advocata’s Bath Curry Indicator (BCI), which expanded by 0.70 percent from the previous month. 

The BCI, established by Colombo-based policy think tank, tracks the monthly changes in food prices. The latest analysis indicates that the month of July witnessed an increase in the food prices compared to June. 

However, the change was below one percent.

For the month of July 2021, the prices of pumpkin showed the largest increase of 66.4 percent, whereas minor increases were observed in the prices of Samba rice, beans, dhal and fish (balaya).

The changes witnessed in July 2021 is a year-on-year (YoY) increase of 45 percent when compared with the corresponding month of the previous year. 

The increase shows that an average family of four that spent Rs.899.85 on this basket of goods for a week in July 2020, paid Rs.1308.10 for the same amount of goods in a week in July 2021. 

The BCI tracks the weekly retail prices in the Colombo market of the most commonly consumed food ingredients that might be used in a typical ‘bath’ curry meal. The prices are collected from the ‘Weekly Indicators’ published by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). The CBSL data showed that the Colombo Consumer Price Index (CCPI) increased to 5.7 percent in June 2021, from 12 months ago. The increase was attributed to the monthly increase of prices of items in the non-food categories. 

Meanwhile, non-food inflation decreased to 11 percent in July, from 11.3 percent  in June.