December saw a decrease of 1.5 percent in Transport and Food & Non-Alcoholic Beverages prices which cushioned the effect of rising food prices during the year.

Along with this, prices for Health as well as Clothing & Footwear were also down a touch at 0.3% and 0.2% respectively.

Housing & Utilities was down a notch (-0.1%) while prices for communication, recreation and education have been broadly flat for a number of years and remain unchanged last month.

Partially offsetting the December price declines were increases in the price of miscellaneous goods and services, mainly personal services, (+0.5%) and household contents +0.2%.

The Consumer Price Index decreased by 0.6 percent last month, bringing the annual inflation down slightly from 5.8 percent in November to 5.1 percent in December.

These figures are for December 2023 and in comparison, to December 2022.

Food prices jumped 3.5% in November to be up 12% year-on-year, however, some of the strong gains in food prices in November were unwound last month pushing the aggregate annual food inflation down to nine percent in December 2023.

The current CPI is based on weights derived from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2013/2014.

The Fiji Bureau of Statistics has said that it will recalibrate its CPI based on updated product groups and associated weights soon.