Rejaul Karim Byron

Inflation ended the just-concluded fiscal year at 5.65 per cent, slightly overshooting the government’s target of 5.5 per cent, owing to the dragging supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic-induced shutdown.

Fiscal 2019-20’s weighted-average inflation was also 17 basis points higher than the previous year’s 5.48 per cent, showed data from the Bureau of Statistics (BBS) yesterday.

However, this is the third lowest annual inflation recorded by the government in the last decade, budget documents showed. In June, overall inflation rose 50 basis points to 6.02 per cent from 5.52 per cent in the same month a year earlier, driven by the increase in food inflation.

Food inflation was 6.54 per cent in June, up 1.14 percentage points over the same month in 2019.

Planning Minister MA Mannan, while releasing the data, blamed the floods and the damages caused by the natural calamities for the sudden increase in the general inflation.

“Once the flood situation improves, inflation would come down,” he said.

Non-food inflation dropped 49 basis points to 5.22 per cent in the last month of the fiscal year, from 5.71 per cent in June last year.

In rural areas, inflation crept up to 6.02 per cent, which was 5.38 per cent in June last year, up 64 basis points.