The inflation recorded in the period was 2.1 percentage points higher than the revised annual target of eight percent.[break]
Inflation remained at higher level in February as prices of cereal grains, vegetables, meat, fish, clothes and footwear, among others, shot up by over 10 percent, the latest macroeconomic report of Nepal Rastra Bank, the central monetary authority, says.
Prices of cereal grains and their products, for instance, went up by 10.2 percent over the year, while vegetables became expensive by 16.2 percent year-on-year. Similarly, prices of meat and fish rose by 14.4 percent, while prices of ghee and oil went up by 13.7 percent over the year.
Among non-food items, clothes and footwear became expensive by 11.5 percent in February, as against 15.2 percent in the same period last year. Cost of housing and utilities also shot up during the period, recording a hike of 10.2 percent in the period. Similarly, prices of furnishing and household equipment rose by 12.9 percent, while education cost went up by 12.5 percent over one-year period.
The central bank data show that consumer prices increased by 10.2 percent in Kathmandu Valley, 10.6 percent in the Terai and nine percent in the hilly region.
Despite, 10.1 percent hike in consumer prices, wages went up by only eight percent in one-year period, statistics show.
However, this hike in earnings of workers only benefited agricultural, industrial and construction laborers. Wages of agricultural laborers, for instance, went up by 13.1 percent, while construction laborers saw 6.3 percent hike in their earnings. Wages of industrial laborers, on the other hand, rose by 4.7 percent in the one-year period.
However, wages of civil servants and those working in private companies did not increase at all in the review period, the statistics showed.
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