Egypt's core inflation declined to 30.57 percent year-on-year in May from 32.06 percent in April and 32.25 percent in March, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) announced on Thursday. On a monthly basis, core inflation increased to 1.99 percent from 1.10 percent recorded in April, the bank said in a statement on its website. The core consumer price index that the CBE uses to measure price levels- which excludes essential commodities such as fruit and vegetables- started to hit double digits in May last year, when it reached a then-seven-year-high of 12.2 percent. Egypt's annual headline inflation rate, the annual urban price inflation, eased to 30.9 percent this May, down from 32.9 percent in April and up from 12.2 percent in May 2016, the country's state statistics body CAPMAS announced earlier on Thursday. In late May, the central bank's monetary policy committee decided to raise the overnight deposit rate, overnight lending rate and the rate of the bank's main operation by 200 basis points, to 16.7 percent, 17.75 percent, and 17.25 percent, respectively. Egypt's inflation rate has been rising since the central bank floated the exchange rate last November, as part of a set of reforms aiming to revive the country's flagging economy. Source: Ahram online
