KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 28): Malaysia’s January inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), grew at 2.7% year-on-year, the lowest since December 2016. The figure was also below the consensus target of a 2.9% y-o-y growth.

According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DoSM), the inflation rate was driven mainly by transportation which grew 5.7%, and food & non-alcoholic beverages which rose 3.8% from the year before.

Eight other groups that pushed up the inflation rate were: furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance (up 2.6%), restaurants and hotels (up 2.4%), health (2.3%), housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (up 2.2%), education (up 1.2%), miscellaneous goods and services (up 0.9%), recreation services and culture (up 0.5%), as well as alcoholic beverages and tobacco (up 0.2%).

On a monthly basis, the CPI rose 0.3% from December last year.

Four states registered higher inflation rates than the nation’s 2.7%. They are: Malacca at 3%, Johor at 2.9%, Selangor and the Federal Territory of Putrajaya at 2.9%, and Negeri Sembilan at 2.8%.

In 2017, headline inflation hit a high of 5.1% in March and remained above 3% throughout the year. The last time the headline inflation figure fell below 3% was in Dec 2016, when it came in at 1.7%.

Bank Negara Malaysia raised the overnight policy rate (OPR) for the first time in three and a half years at the beginning of this year, by 25 basis points to 3.25%.