The National Consumer Price Index 15 (IPCA-15), the preview of official inflation, registered deflation (price fall) of 0.73% in August this year. It is the lowest rate in the IPCA-15 historical series, which began in 1991, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
The IPCA-15 had registered inflation rates of 0.13% in July this year and 0.89% in August of last year. With this month’s result, the IPCA-15 accumulates inflation rates of 5.02% in the year and 9.60% in 12 months.
The price drop observed in the preview of August was mainly driven by transport, which registered a deflation of 5.24%. The behavior of this group of expenses was influenced by the drop in fuel prices (-15.33%).
Among fuels, drops of 16.80% were observed for gasoline, 10.78% for ethanol, 5.40% for vehicle gas and 0.56% for diesel oil.
Other groups of expenses with deflation were housing (-0.37%), with emphasis on the decline in residential electricity prices (-3.29%); and communication (-0.30%).
On the other hand, food products had the highest price increase in the IPCA-15 in the period (1.12%), a rate similar to that observed in the previous month (1.16%), due to products such as long-life milk (14, 21%), fruit (2.99%), cheese (4.18%) and chicken pieces (3.08%).
The health and personal care expenditure groups also had inflation (0.81%), personal expenses (0.81%), clothing (0.76%), education (0.61%) and household items (0.08 %).
