These are the Singapore inflation rates for 2009:
January: 2.9%
February: 1.9%
March: 1.6%
April: -0.7%
Food and Health Care is leading the charge, both rising by 3.6% respectively year on year. What surprised me was that the CPI actually went negative. What I've forgotten to take into account was the Service & Conservancy Charges (S&CC) rebates handed out in April. I expected the housing inflation to be around 4%, and not -1.7%. Recreation inflation also turned negative due to reduction in the travel fares. Transport & Communication inflation as expected was lower, -6.3% to be exact.
I'm not sure if they normalised the S&CC rebates over a period of time, or it's treated as a one-off rebate. If it is a one-off rebate, then from May onwards, the Housing inflation would go back to being positive. Transport & Communication might start to increase slightly due to the increase in oil prices. I'm still of view CPI should go back to slightly around 0.5% till June, if the S&CC rebates are one-off. That also depends on the Great Singapore Sale though.
I believe that this year it would really be a sale worth waiting for.
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