Lower oil price to keep inflation down to 3% next year, Commerce forecasts

The global economic slowdown has pulled down crude-oil prices and the measures of the ministry in controlling the cost of consumer products and cooked foods helped ease the pressure on prices, permanent secretary Vatchari Vimooktayon said yesterday.
The ministry expects inflation in 2013 will be in the range of 2.8-3.4 per cent, similar to this year, even though the agricultural price-pledging scheme and nationwide implementation of the Bt300 daily minimum wage on January 1 will tend to fuel inflation.
The situation next year should not be tense because large companies can cope with the rise in production costs, including labour costs. Those companies, as well as small producers, are not asking for permission from the ministry to raise their retail prices because that might result in loss of market share, he said.
The ministry reported that the Consumer Price Index in November dropped by 0.35 per cent from October. That was the first month-on-month drop in the first 11 months of this year.
However, in annualised terms, the CPI last month increased by 2.74 per cent. For the first 11 months of the year, the CPI was up by 2.96 per cent.
The slide in the CPI was mainly due to the declines in the indices for food and beverages of 0.86 per cent and for fruit and vegetables of 6.62 per cent.
Driving inflation up in the |first 11 months was the food |and beverage index, which increased by 4.93 per cent. By components, rice, flour and related products climbed by 2.24 per cent, followed by meat, chicken, duck and fish by 1.05 per cent and fruit and vegetables by 11.55 per cent.
The non-food index advanced by 1.70 per cent.