Dominican Republic: Inflation eases in February

In February, consumer prices fell 0.56% over the previous month, which followed the 0.01% decrease observed in January. According to the Central Bank, the decrease mainly reflected lower prices for clothing and footwear as well as for transport.

Inflation eased from 2.5% in January to 1.7% in February, which marked the lowest reading in three months. Annual average inflation was stable in February at January’s 1.0%. Headline inflation remains below the lower bound of the Central Bank’s tolerance margin of plus/minus 1.0 percentage point around its 4.0% target rate.

At its meeting on 29 February, the Central Bank decided to maintain its monetary policy rate at 5.00%, taking into consideration the inflation outlook as well as the current state of the economy.

FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast participants expect inflation to end 2016 at 2.6%, which is unchanged over last month’s projection. Panelists project inflation of 3.7% in 2017.