SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore’s main price gauge contracted for the seventh consecutive month in August, data showed on Wednesday, with prices falling 0.3% from a year earlier.
Core inflation – the central bank’s favoured price measure – was expected to fall 0.4% based on eight economists’ forecasts. The gauge had fallen 0.4% in July after entering negative territory in February for the first time in a decade.
Singapore’s headline consumer price index was down 0.4% from a year earlier, unchanged from the prior month, data from the trade ministry and the Monetary Authority of Singapore showed. Economists had forecast a 0.5% drop.
Authorities in the city-state, battling its deepest ever recession due to the COVID-19 pandemic, expect core and headline inflation to average between -1% and 0% in 2020.
(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan and Chen Lin in Singapore; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
